Tag: Winnie the Pooh

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Greetings and Felicitations

Winnie the Pooh Explains Compliance: Part 5 – Winnie the Pooh as CECO (Think, Think, Think)

This week I have explored compliance through a five-part podcast series, as seen through the lens of Winnie the Pooh and the characters living in the Hundred Acre Woods. I want to conclude my series by looking at Winnie the Pooh himself through the lens of the Chief Ethics and Compliance Officer (CECO).

Pooh may be a bit naive and slow-witted, but he is also friendly, thoughtful and steadfast. Although he and his friends agree that he is “a bear of very little brain”, Pooh is occasionally acknowledged to have a clever idea, usually driven by common sense. Pooh is also a talented poet; his poems and “hums frequently punctuate the stories”. Although he is humble about his slow-wittedness, he is comfortable with his creative gifts. When Owl’s house blows down in a windstorm, trapping Pooh, Piglet and Owl inside, Pooh encourages Piglet (the only one small enough to do so) to escape and rescue them all by promising that “a respectful Pooh song” will be written about Piglet’s feat. Later, Pooh muses about the creative process as he composes the song.

Pooh is very social. Christopher Robin is his closest friend, Piglet, and often chooses to spend his time with one or both of them. But he also habitually visits the other animals, often looking for a snack or an audience for his poetry as much as for companionship. His kind-heartedness means he goes out of his way to be friendly to Eeyore, visiting him, bringing him a birthday present, and building him a house, despite receiving mostly disdain from Eeyore.

We need to recall that the DOJ started from the position that the role of compliance and ethics in an organization was co-equal. Winnie the Pooh reminds us of that foundational building block. Pooh also reminds us that a CECO is a social animal. Just as he is friends with all the animals and characters we have visited this week, you as a compliance professional should make friends with all the corporate functions they represented this week: sales, HR, finance and legal. If you find you run out of hunny to pass around, you can always resort to the Russ Berland strategy of pizza.

Even though this is the final offering in this week’s blog post on Compliance in the Hundred Acre Woods, do not feel blue. We will have another week of Pooh later this summer for more compliance lessons. And if you do feel blue in the interim, check out this YouTube clip of the Pooh theme song. And always remember, when all else fails;

“Think, Think, Think”

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Greetings and Felicitations

Winnie the Pooh Explains Compliance: Part 4 – Piglet and Finance

This week I am exploring a five-part series on compliance as seen through the lens of Winnie the Pooh and the characters who live in the Hundred Acre Woods. Today I discuss Pooh’s best friend, Piglet, and use Piglet to consider the role of finance in a compliance program.

Piglet has some great adventures (or sometimes misadventures), such as giving Eeyore a birthday balloon that pops or getting lost in the Hundred Acre Wood mist and helping to rescue Pooh and Owl after they are trapped in Owl’s fallen house. My favorite Piglet tale is when Eeyore mistakenly offers Piglet’s house as a new home for Owl after his house has blown down. Piglet nobly agrees to let Owl have the house, at which point Pooh asks Piglet to live with him, and Piglet accepts. This poignant story shows the true meaning of friendship and any Pooh story I know.

I cannot think of any character more able to illustrate the role of finance in compliance than Piglet. He is obsessed with keeping things neat and tidy and sometimes has an inferiority complex, although his friends think highly of him. Sort of like finance.

Finance has roles in the prevention, detection and remediates prongs of any compliance program. In the prevent prong, this is most particularly true around offshore payments, generally defined as payments made to a location other than the home domicile of the payee or the location where the services were delivered. If a Tunisian agent who performs services in Dubai asks for payment in a location other than Dubai or Tunisia, that will qualify as an offshore payment. If you train people in finance on this issue, they may well pick up the phone and notify compliance when they see a request for payment in a geographic location separate from one of the two standard payment venues. When properly documented, those types of communications demonstrate that your compliance program is operationalized into the fabric of the organization.

The bottom line is that not only can finance be one of the compliance function’s strongest corporate allies but that the role of finance, by its nature, works to operationalize compliance. This is because to implement the appropriate internal controls around compliance, finance must know the specific requirements of compliance know what kinds of issues are likely to come up that might create a risk of bribery and corruption, all leading to an understanding of the appropriate compliance internal controls to implement around payments.

Join me tomorrow when I conclude with Winnie the Pooh and his influence on the Chief Ethics and Compliance Officer (CECO) role.

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Greetings and Felicitations

Winnie the Pooh Explains Compliance: Part 3 – Eeyore, Compliance & Legal

This week I am exploring a five-part series on compliance as seen through the lens of Winnie the Pooh and the characters who live in the Hundred Acre Wood. In this Part 3, we consider perhaps the most beloved character (other than Pooh himself) Eeyore and use him to explore the differences in compliance and corporate legal.

Eeyore is described as an “old grey donkey”. Eeyore has a poor opinion of most of the other animals in the Forest, describing them as having “No brain at all, some of them” and “only grey fluff that’s blown into their heads by mistake” (from chapter 1 of The House at Pooh Corner). Eeyore’s favorite food is thistles. He lives in the southeast corner of the Hundred Acre Wood, in an area labeled “Eeyore’s Gloomy Place: Rather Boggy and Sad” on the map in the Winnie-the-Pooh book. He has a stick house therein called The House at Pooh Corner. Pooh and Piglet built it for him after accidentally mistaking the original house that Eeyore built for a pile of sticks. On Eeyore’s birthday, he is given an empty honey jar from Pooh for keeping things in, a popped red balloon from Piglet to keep in the pot, and a note from Owl. (Eeyore’s birthday was originally celebrated by University of Texas students in Austin and is now a worldwide phenomenon.)

Eeyore expects misfortune to fall upon him, accepts it when it does, and rarely even tries to prevent it. He is known for saying “Thanks for noticin’ me” and “Ohhh-kayyy”. His grumpiness is best shown in an encounter with Piglet, who cheerfully bade him, “Good morning!” Eeyore responded, “Well, I suppose it is…for some.” Yet, Eeyore is capable of great compassion. Most interestingly, he has a great friendship with Tigger.

I use Eeyore as an introduction to the differences in the compliance function and the legal department in the corporate world. When I initially went in-house, it was made clear to me that the role of the in-house department in the company I worked for was to protect the company. When I became a General Counsel (GC), I took that role to heart and felt like I was the company’s lawyer (even if the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) felt like I was his lawyer). But as Donna Boehme pointed out, there are distinct differences in approaches to compliance from practicing law. She said, “one thing is clear – the two functions have very different mindsets, mandates and priorities.” She notes that the legal department’s mandate is to “advise and protect the company.” The compliance mandate is much broader.

The bottom line is that while you may want an Eeyore in the corporate legal department, just saying no; that is not something you want in compliance. The job of compliance is not to protect the company at all costs. Instead, it is to prevent, detect and remediate any compliance issues that arise. You cannot do that by simply saying No. Yet, just like Eeyore, the corporate legal department can be a valuable adjunct to the compliance function if an internal investigation occurs and you want to maintain your corporate privilege.

Join me tomorrow when I take a look at Piglet and the role of payroll in compliance.

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Greetings and Felicitations

Winnie the Pooh Explains Compliance: Part 2 – Kanga, Roo and the Compliance Ombudsman

This week I am exploring a five-part series on compliance as seen through the lens of Winnie the Pooh and the characters who live in the Hundred Acre Woods: Pooh, Eeyore, Tigger, Kanga & Roo, and Piglet. Winnie-the-Pooh, also called Pooh Bear and Pooh was created by English author A. A. Milne. Yesterday, we introduced Tigger and the sales function’s role in compliance. In this episode, we focus on Kanga and her son, Roo, and the Corporate Ombudsman’s role in compliance.

Kanga is a female kangaroo and the doting mother of Roo. They live near the Sandy Pit in the northwestern part of the Hundred Acre Wood. Kanga is the only female character to appear in the books. Kanga is kind-hearted, calm, patient, sensible and down to earth. She likes to keep things clean and organized and offers motherly advice and food to anyone who asks her. She is protective over Roo and treats him with kind words and gentle discipline. She also has a sense of humor, as revealed in chapter seven of Winnie-the-Pooh when Rabbit connives to kidnap Roo, leaving Piglet in his place; Kanga pretends not to notice that Piglet is not Roo and proceeds to give him Roo’s usual bath, much to Piglet’s dismay.

Roo is Kanga’s cheerful, playful, energetic son, who moved to the Hundred Acre Wood with her. His best friends are Tigger and a young Heffalump named Lumpy, who loves to play with him. Roo is the youngest of the main characters. When Kanga and Roo first come to the Hundred Acre Wood, everyone thinks Kanga is a fierce animal, but discover this untrue and become friends with her. In the book, when Tigger comes to the forest, she welcomes him into her home, attempts to find him food he likes and allows him to live with her and Roo. After this, Kanga treats him like she does her son. I want to use Kanga and Roo to consider another role in compliance. It is the creation of an ombudsman for employees to help facilitate compliance.

Kanga is the most trusted soul in the Hundred Acre Woods. She would be an ideal ombudsman and an example that the “success of these programs depends partly on getting the right person for the role. A good ombudsman is a superb listener who establishes trust in people at all levels.” They need to have the skills to think through solutions to problems. Kanga certainly has such skills. A great example is the arrival of Tigger in the Hundred Acre Woods. While Tigger claims to like everything to eat for breakfast, it is quickly proven he does not like honey, acorns, thistles, or most of the contents of Kanga’s larder. However, he discovers what Tigger likes best is the extract of malt, which Kanga has on hand because she gives it to Roo as “strengthening medicine”. This is another key trait of an ombudsman; the person must also respect senior executives and be comfortable taking issues to the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) or the Board if necessary. Understanding the corporate culture and who has influence is also important – which is why many capable people in this role are promoted from inside the company. The same can be said for Kanga in the Hundred Acre Wood.

Join me tomorrow when I consider Eeyore and the role of corporate legal in compliance.

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Greetings and Felicitations

Winnie the Pooh Explains Compliance: Part 1 – Tigger and Sales

This week I begin a five-part series on compliance as seen through the lens of Winnie the Pooh and the characters who live in the Hundred Acre Woods: Pooh, Eeyore, Tigger, Kanga & Roo, and Piglet. This episode begins with Tigger and the sales function’s role in compliance.

Tigger first appears in the House at Pooh Corner when he arrives at Pooh’s doorstep in the middle of the night. Tigger takes up residence with Kanga and Roo. He becomes great friends with Roo, and Kanga treats him like she does her son. Tigger seems to have boundless energy, often too much energy for some of the other denizens of the Hundred Acre Wood. Rabbit, who is constantly exasperated by Tigger’s constant bouncing; Eeyore, who is once bounced into the river by Tigger; and, finally, there is Pooh’s good friend Piglet, who always seems a little nervous about the new, large, bouncy animal in the Hundred Acre Wood.

Tigger seems like the epitome of a top salesperson. He is very confident, has quite an ego, and has a high opinion of himself. He always seems to have great energy and optimism, and though always well-meaning, he can also be mischievous, and his actions have sometimes led to chaos and trouble for himself and his friends. Tigger often undertakes tasks with gusto, only to realize they are not as easy as he had originally imagined. Tigger, unique as ever, refers to himself not as a tiger but as a “Tigger”, and when he introduces himself, he announces the proper way to spell his name, and that is “T-I-double-Guh-Er”, which spells “Tigger”.

Tigger seems like a great way to think about sales incentives from the compliance perspective. Much like Tigger, most sales folks have their hearts in the right place, even if their actions cause trouble for themselves and others.

At the end of the day, Tigger is good-hearted, even if his over-exuberance can sometimes lead to misadventures. If you properly incentivize your sales team, you will hopefully keep their over-exuberance into being simply good-hearted as well.

Join me tomorrow when I consider Kanga, Roo and the Compliance Ombudsman.

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Everything Compliance

Episode 61, the Mélange edition


Welcome to the only roundtable podcast in compliance. Today, we have a serving of Jonathan Armstrong, Jay Rosen, Matt Kelly, and Tom Fox sitting with a veritable mélange of topics and rants/shouts outs.

  1. Jonathan Armstrong critiques recently released information on the good ship, UK Serious Fraud Office. He shouts out to UK footballer Markus Rash about his campaign to end child.
  2. Jay Rosen considers what compliance issues arise in working from home. He rants that the Trump Administration needs to free Dr. Fauci.
  3. Matt Kelly considers the US Supreme Court decision in Bostock and what it means for compliance professionals. He shouts out to the new CEO of Wirecard, named 24 hours after taking over the CCO chair at the embattled company.
  4. Tom Fox looks at corporate compliance through the lens of characters from the Hundred Acre Wood. He shouts out to Texas Governor Gregg Abbot as winner of the Covidiot Award, Texas division. 

The members of the Everything Compliance are:

  • Jay Rosen– Jay is Vice President, Business Development Corporate Monitoring at Affiliated Monitors. Rosen can be reached at JRosen@affiliatedmonitors.com
  • Mike Volkov – One of the top FCPA commentators and practitioners around and the Chief Executive Officer of The Volkov Law Group, LLC. Volkov can be reached at mvolkov@volkovlawgroup.com
  • Matt Kelly – Founder and CEO of Radical Compliance. Kelly can be reached at mkelly@radicalcompliance.com
  • Jonathan Armstrong –is our UK colleague, who is an experienced data privacy/data protection lawyer with Cordery in London. Armstrong can be reached at armstrong@corderycompliance.com
  • Jonathan Marks is Partner, Firm Practice Leader – Global Forensic, Compliance & Integrity Services at Baker Tilly. Marks can be reached at marks@bakertilly.com

The host and producer (and sometime panelist) of Everything Compliance is Tom Fox the Compliance Evangelist. Everything Compliance is a part of the Compliance Podcast Network. He can be reached at tfox@tfoxlaw.com