Tony Bennett died last week. He was one of a handful of performers whose music filled my head, heart and ears my entire lifetime. For me, it all began with I Left My Heart in San Francisco in the mid-1960s. By that time Bennett had at least one maybe two careers of a lifetime. But by the 1960s Bennett was just getting started. He was a crooner of the old school but he wanted to sing the classics, which he did. The thing about classics, is that they are classic for a reason. They are great songs and in the hands of great singers the are wonderous.
The was never proved more so than in 1993 when MTV had Tony Bennett Unplugged. It was a musical event for the ages. It won a Grammy for Best Album. Here was a (then) 70-something crooning the classics to an entirely new generation of fan, GenXers. And they loved him, the songs and the music. That event led to Bennett going back on top for the rest of his life. It also led to collaborations and even duets with artists as diverse as Lady Gaga, KD Lange and Amy Winehouse. So farewell to Tony Bennett, forever singing the classics of the Great American Songbook.
Have you ever wondered how to make compliance training interesting and engaging? I thought about Tony Bennett after I recorded a recent podcast with Peter Grossman and Duane Stumpf, two experts in the field of compliance training, to discuss this very topic. Peter is the co-founder of Labyrinth Training, which creates interactive animated compliance trainings, and Dwayne is the global head of integrity and compliance and the chief compliance officer for Alcon Vision. Together, they discussed the challenge of incorporating a 1970s rock and roll music number into a compliance training, and how they created a training series that was interactive and required the user to make decisions that affected the narrative.
The conversation highlighted the importance of delivering lessons in a way that people will remember, enjoy, and take notice. Peter has a background in entertainment and publishing, having worked for US Weekly and Rolling Stone, and Dwayne is a “recovering sales rep” who spent the first decade of his life in sales and the next decade plus in consulting. Their combined experience and expertise made for a fascinating discussion.
The Lens policy is Alcon Vision’s policy on how they interact in the marketplace. It is a principles-based policy that helps guide and put context around being ethical in the marketplace with their products. Peter and his team helped Alcon Vision put real life scenarios into sticky, funny, and humorous content. The team then launched a compliance training program in a Netflix style, with five episodes each lasting seven to eleven minutes. The team hyped up the program with emails, internal social media posts, and movie posters.
The team was able to get an impressive 81% of people to complete the training within 60 days. They changed the narrative of compliance by creating something that had never been seen before. To make the training even more engaging, they incorporated a musical number into the training, with a 70s style rock song. They also created a catchy jingle for an awareness video about the importance of wearing masks.
The fourth episode of the training introduced the worst person, Dr. Louis. Dr. Louis is famous and is trying to take advantage of the salesperson by soliciting bribes. Dr. Louis is wearing a lab coat that looks like a NASCAR jacket, covered in ads for every product. He tries to convince the salesperson to sponsor his lab coat with the Q Four logo and even breaks into a song and dance to convince the salesperson to sponsor his lab coat. Martin, the salesperson, starts singing along with Dr. Louis at one point.
The CEO of the organization even sent a note of congratulations when the award was announced. They even created a fictional product called Q Four, a quadrifocal lens with a Siri-like voice command to change eye color. The purpose of the training was to get people to stop and think before they engage in activities. The team won two Telly Awards, one for the narrative and one for the interactive design.
The takeaway from this conversation is that compliance training should be engaging, interactive, and fun, and tailored to the needs of the organization. Using interactive elements, humorous content, and musical numbers, organizations can create effective and memorable compliance trainings that their employees will enjoy and take notice of and most importantly will become more engaged with your compliance function.
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