109. Focus on Cultural Health, not Compliance Culture

I'm actually claiming that on a regular basis, that in compliance, surprise is the enemy. Surprise is the enemy. I think we should keep that in mind. I don't know any organization that is 100% perfect on everything. I don't believe so. And it's not that they are doing their best. It's not that they are, you know, really moving the needle together. But we all know that some aspects may be better, kind of managed and so on. So let's recognize that. Welcome to the leading Transmational Change Podcast. Our passion is to help you lead and develop organizations with a remarkably healthy culture that can positively impact all of its stakeholders. Every other Thursday we drop our long conversations with world-leading researchers and experts on culture, ethics, change and leadership. My name is Tobias Tulson and I'm your host and the co-founder of Hearts Management. Steven, it's such a privilege to have you on the podcast today. Thank you Tobias. We're pleased to be here. So you've spent over two decades building ethics and compliance programs across some very complex pharmaceutical organizations like Eli Lilly, Abdi, Medday and now G Healthcare. Did you share a defining moment early in your career that shaped how you think about the role of ethics and compliance in shaping organizational culture? Oh my God, that's a very good question actually. I may start by basically saying that if you would ask me the same question maybe like 10 years ago, I would have provided a certainly different answer and to your point around having been privileged to see the evolution of this compliance landscape in particular within our pharmaceutical industry as created in the couple of reflections and maybe some changes in a way I was looking at that when I started in this career. You know, as you said, unfortunately it's UK the decade ago. I think now we are to point which is much more mature in terms of understanding what do we mean by compliance in organizations. We are not completed there yet and I really believe that it's going to be a journey actually. It's not going to be well not at the end of anything, but I think we are pretty advanced now. And I can certainly say that we are to point where we understand much better where we are, where we like to go and has an industry in particular. We have met some huge progress in direction of trying to bring integrity at the center of everything that we do. But I can certainly elaborate a little bit around some of the topics, but the topics that you mentioned around organizations and culture for me is certainly front and center in everything we do. We tend to believe that compliance is a lot about processes and tools. Yes, we need a toolbox. We need some form of toolbox. We need to create education. We need to develop skills. We need to develop communications. But ultimately, this is all about people. And I think this entry point of just realizing that ultimately, this is all about people as change a lot my vision and around how we can then use that leverage this to make a developed strong compliance program as much as possible. Yeah, I'm thinking about, you know, that it's all about people and I was doing this workshop some quite recently. And as I was doing it, we were talking about with groups of leaders talking about making values based decisions and how difficult that can be under pressure. And I was thinking about this picture, you know, of a compass, which is, I think, typically a picture you use when you talk about values and that are compass guides the way. And I think so many times people just assume, but I have this good compass or I had these good values, but I was thinking about what happens when you bring a magnet close to the compass. Suddenly, their action will change. And I think that's very, very true in organizations. And I think that really points towards culture in the sense that oftentimes there are magnets, there are things, there are pressures, there are expectations, there are things that are pulling in a certain direction that might make people act in ways that they would not assume that they would based on the idea that I have good values. I have good compass in that sense. What responsibility do you think that organizations have in shaping that context? That's an excellent question. And by the way, this is certainly the most difficult question that we have in front of us as complex professionals, which is in a form of summary of your question is how do we transpose something that we all agree is natural and important, which is integrity and everything we do into a reality on the ground. And that's the challenge, right? And again, this will bring me back to culture, whether we like it or not, right? And you know, I will quote maybe Aristotle, the Greek philosopher that was, I think saying something like we are what we repeatedly do every day, right? And then I may even say if I transpose that into compliance, compliance is then not an action, but a habit. And then if we really try to transpose this into a culture, and that we recognize that compliance is not something theoretical, right? We said values and of course, integrity is important. I don't know any companies in this world, even outside of farmer, that is not putting something on the values saying, of course, ethics is important, integrity is important, patience is center of everything, etc. So all of this is positive. It's good. The challenge I'm putting on those quotes is really, are well, are we in transposing this in the reality? And that's exactly your question. Because if we have nice values that we don't transpose them into something in what we do every day, it's useless. Now, everybody can make mistakes. I just want to start by that, you know, mistakes are possible. We are humans, right? So, so I think as an organization, we should accept that some people may make mistakes. If it's isolated mistakes, I don't think it's going to be a big problem. What we want to avoid is culture which are in a way organized to deliver in a dark side of this, right? And so constantly pushing the boundaries, constantly getting into space, which is not appropriate. And again, back to culture, you know, what type of culture do I want for my company, what type of culture do I want for myself? And one element that would like to bring that I realized quite recently actually is, I was myself pushing for many, many years, even with my CEO, with my, all my company telling that, okay, we should have the right complex culture guys. And everybody was telling me, yes, of course, we should have the right complex culture and of the discussion. Actually, I think it's, it's a big mistakes to push that. And let me explain why I think that by saying that we say something which is absolutely correct, right? We should have the right complex culture. But again, back to the point of how do we transpose this into the reality? This is not speaking to each and every employee, you know, even if I go to any employees of my company or my past companies, I will tell you, do you have the right complex culture yourself? Of course, yes, no question. Is this a reality? And consciously or unconsciously, I think we should run the extra mile to kind of understand what is the meaning of a complex culture for each and every employee of the company. And that's why this statement to run complex culture is very dangerous in my opinion, because we satisfy yourself. We say, okay, we will install the right complex culture boss. No problem. Let me do that. I will do that for you. I will not claim that myself. I'm a little bit provocative here, of course, but for the purpose of the discussion, I would myself not say I'm committed to install the right complex culture. Of course, I would love to say this, but in reality, if I'm honest, I don't think it's something that I can really transpose. Now, you would, you may argue, so what's the solution, right? What should you do? Because still, if I'm here, is that I need to move the needle, right? In one way or another. Sure. I think the solution to me is, again, talking about culture is around bringing this appliance integrity environment, not at the level of compliance, but bringing this overall concept at the level of the company culture. Right. Not one level down, if you see what I mean, it has to be at the level of the company culture, including transposition, of course. So what does that mean? It means that, of course, the tone at the top should be clear. If we go to that, it's just should be given. I think it's in place, you know, to be honest, I've never seen leaders that are not having the right tone at the top, but where is sometimes lacking and are not specifically flagging anyone here. But sometimes we are not good at transposing that in reality. But not only this attribute, you may have other value attribute that are not completely transpose, right? You know, we have lots of fantastic ideas. So, but what I'm claiming here is that I believe that if we are capable to really embed this element into the company values, then we have a much better chance. And true, I have those being transposed because everything is going to be logical. You will have a leadership model that will be aligned with that. And you know the importance of leadership, you know, into all of this, you will have rewards and recognitions that will be kind of recognized according to those values as well. And you know the value of rewards and recognition, we have to be consistent in all of this. You will create the right ownership and accountability, which we're going to do that. And then you will have opportunities to assess and reassess and, you know, and evaluate and exercise some formal stewardship around this. So that's why I feel that we need to change a little bit with vision of that. I love that Stephen. It makes a lot of sense. And this really, really I think ties into so much of my work and our work. And then what we are passionate about and the idea of cultural health, which is the idea because I think so many times just like you said that culture can become quite disjoint it. So you have the HR function, you know, pushing high performance culture or something else. Maybe sometimes as well being culture, you know, diversity culture and then we have perhaps a quality department going on a quality culture. We have sales culture. We have like all the different points and it's quite disjointed. It is and there's not a clear shared framework of what is the culture that we're actually building together and what are the levers of that culture, just like you were saying. And I think that's why as well that so much of the work then Donald culture doesn't actually impact the levers because the people who try to do that work don't have authority in that sense or impact over the levers. And I think here is where we really we need to shift the perspective. We need to I think look much more as a picture of what does cultural health look like for our organization, what it is said that will help us perform thrive and acts with integrity under pressure. And and how do we instill that and then I think as you say because I think in most companies, I mean, you have these different pieces there. So what would it actually mean to drive those those values and that we're not drive what does mean to integrate them and where I'm thinking that HR or other executives need to take as much ownership of integrity as the ethics of compliance function does. Absolutely. And you said it very nicely. I think what we have to show something which is consistent from A to Z, right. That's very, very important. And if there's any form of disruption into all of this from, you know, the values that we are posting on our websites and everywhere. And how we behave as a organization that this disruption will create failure and will create issues. So really what is very important is, you know, whatever values we claim, we should transpose this into reality. Otherwise, it's not going to fly well. That's a challenge. It's easy to say, but it's more difficult to implement actually, but that's a way to look at it. It absolutely is. And I think this is a great topic to dig into and something that I thought about as you were talking earlier, you know, you know, about the tone of the top and or that most of the time that is in place. And in a conversation, I had in another company some time ago, you know, somebody raised the question regarding the tone of the top and basically that, I mean, we are giving these messages to the leadership team to say. And I think that's actually often the reality that the tone of the top is not necessarily set by the executive team themselves or the CEO himself or herself, but it is actually set by different functions who write the message and say, this is what you should say. So it's no wonder that we say the tone at the top is then aligned. But what I think have been felt in many organizations is that there's a difference that it between what if we would say walking the talk. If we would say what is shown through priorities, through actions, through strategies, through what is celebrated, like at all levels within your organization, what was your thoughts when I say that? I'm completely aligned and the way I'm translating this in my day to the environment is around ownership and accountability. And this is only a critical success factor. If we have a program, whatever program, and we are not capable to create that ownership at all levels, you know, we discussed about the CEO, of course, that's a very important person into into the whole organization, you know, giving the tone, giving the direction and all of this. It's very important, but ownership should exist at all levels. And if integrity is important for the company, it's important for all employees at all levels. And each employer should own it for what they do every day, right? At the level of their execution, right? And this ownership is also a journey, right? You don't declare ownership. You have to demonstrate ownership. You have to show that you are taking ownership on something and ownership is also going with accountability, as you can guess. And this also something quite complex, right? How far am I accountable of what I'm doing myself? How far am I accountable of what I'm hearing from others? How far am I accountable of a stressful to your point or a peer response to run stressful environment and amateur pressure? It's kind of push to do something that I didn't really want, things like that. So it's again a concept that we have to manipulate with lots of caution. But ultimately, I think we are the role to play in creating ownership and accountability and organization, which is for me other critical factors, success factors. We need to have the right culture in place, very clear elements that are shared, communicated, indoors, accepted and transposed into every day's actions, but we should also at the level of each of us create that level of ownership and accountability and accept it, right? Because if I accept being in that company, I accept the values and then I own it and for the small piece that I'm delivering, I should demonstrate that in there. So definitely that's absolutely critical and crucial. The point of ownership is so important just as you say, but it's also extremely difficult. And I mean it's one thing to take ownership and let's say signing a paper saying I'm going to abide by these policies or whatever. But when working with change in an organization and working specifically with organizational change and when you make an assessment, when you look at the culture where you maybe identify certain cultural root causes and you work, for example, with a leadership team. And I find that often you can kind of fall into the trap that's basically that, okay, we see that there are issues that have to be addressed there, but I haven't done anything wrong and there's nothing really I can do differently going forward. So taking ownership in terms of acknowledging, not saying that you're bad, not saying that you're a failed person or failed company, but just these things we didn't take our responsibility in the way we should have here or perhaps we acted in a way where that silenced people or at least where we didn't get the important concerns on the table in the way that we should have. Taking ownership of that because I'm thinking that that's really the only real starting point of change because you can change, you can't change what you're not willing to confront, you need to be willing to confront it not just as a general topic, but also in yourself. How do you think that we can create that level of ownership? The magic is actually it's a chemistry, right? We just have to recognize that it's not like one thing that will change everything, there's a little bit of a chemistry here and the ingredient of that chemistry for me will be the following. First, as we said before, we need to have the right tone, the right culture where all the infrastructure should be in place, all of this should be in place. One element that I observe and I'm not speaking, what I'm sharing here is my personal opinion by way, it's not speaking on behalf of my company here, but what I strongly believe is that one element that is sometimes missing is we need to fuel the change and we need to bring the energy into the change. It's not because I'm telling you integrity is important that I'm going to change anything in your behavior because you will tell me yes of course integrity is important and of the story. I need if I want to bring you into that space, I need to bring the energy, I need to help you moving forward, not only with the concept that in everything that you do, that's what ownership is about, right? That's really ownership, it's transposing that into your role, that's one element, the second element that sometimes we miss a little bit, we need sometimes to build capabilities that are simply not existing. You mentioned I think just a minute ago things around change management, we have to recognize that sometimes change management is part of the game and we need to help and as you know change management is not like we change everything in two minutes change management, we have to recognize. In the change management process that some people will be resistant for good or bad reasons they may be resistant some we also may be a little bit pioneer and may help the change and you have majority of people in the middle as always right so I think just realizing this and being simply you know sincere and clear around the fact that it's not because I'm telling you integrity is important that everybody will. Operate like this is already a very important asset and very important kind of vision because believing that simply claims are sufficient to move an organization nothing is wrong is absolutely wrong. So we should and I say we as a leadership team and we as compliance officers should help in this change management and in all the company where I want I've tried to you know influence the leadership to bring them with me. And making sure that at least at the leadership level there's a good understanding that we have the right dialogue they may disagree with me it's not absolutely not a problem but at least we we are together and we move together to create and you know change is a lot around critical mass of people right so so as soon as you have a critical mass of people. That thing the same you have a better place than the opposite so so that's really what it is and creating that critical mass of people as we said is a chemistry you need to communicate well you need to explain well you need to accept the dialogue you need to bring people with you you need to identify where you have potentially kind of resistance and why are they resisting what is their problem and we need to accept that and accepting the dialogue may help to remove some. Tangible conscious or some tough and conscious boy is one thing that comes up to my mind as I listen to you it's often that our focus is so much on awareness creating awareness so creating awareness of risk creating awareness on policies creating awareness of values creating awareness of different things and often when I talk to people in organizations I can get the perception that. They think or assume that awareness is the solution to everything but many times I wonder if awareness is not the ultimate issue here that you can be aware of something and still be very ill equipped to handle you know the challenge when you face it. And you can sometimes even the way I think that we do training and in organizations where we train people on on these topics that sometimes it becomes very kind of top down awareness but we don't get to the point of understanding what are the challenges that people are really facing and understanding also the need of practice. And the need of giving people opportunity to actually and I think that I don't know if you're aware of professor Mary Gentiles work on giving voice to values but in her work she found that we can teach people you know ethical models and all of that and philosophical models but ultimately when people face a situation where they would need to speak up or something like that. What often happens is that people will freeze in the moment if they haven't practiced it so if we think from that perspective maybe then our way of evaluating things is not really whether people are aware if they kind of tick the box but it is much deeper and more difficult question. How well prepared people are if people have the opportunity to practice what they really feel about the pressures they're experiencing and what is truly valued within the organization what is truly expected of them and so on. I understand that becomes a big philosophical broad question but what do you think is a way to kind of take this step to move forward from you know only focus on taking the box on awareness to getting people prepared and equipped to actually deal with the challenges in a better way. Yeah huge question again Tobias but let me give it a try first talking about awareness I'm absolutely convinced and I'm actually claiming that on the regular basis that in compliance surprise is the enemy. Surprise is the enemy I think we should keep that in mind I don't know any organization that is 100% perfect on everything I don't believe so and it's not that they are doing their best it's not that they are you know really moving the needle together but we all know that. Some aspects may be in better kind of managed and so on so let's recognize that the worst scenario is anywhere surprise about something that we ignore completely that we have a significant gap on something whatever the problem is but we have a significant gap and we were even not knowing that we have a gap in that space. So we could not address the point we could not prepare some actions we could not anticipate the consequences of this we are just we can just be defensive that's what we can do right so so for me awareness is critical. One is absolutely critical and we need to organize this because this may be natural or it may not be natural actually and your comment is bringing me to something which I believe is an healthy sign of a match organization which is the quality of the speaker because there are things that the company may themselves identify and say okay I know I have a gap in whatever sector of you know section of my policies. But this may also be things that we simply don't know because we cannot be on the ground you know and particularly in very large companies almost impossible to know what's going on in all continent everywhere and we need to rely on what we are hearing from the leadership. So the quality of the speaker is another essential elements of the I would say to your point I like your terminology around cultural health but that's exactly what it is it's one of the metric either if we be a doctor I would say you know tell me about your speaker tell me about you know how is it working healthy is it what type of information are you getting do you believe that you are getting really getting the sound of the reality on the ground. Are you getting valuable input into that if we are capable to do that we are definitely in a much better place to address the point that you are making which is absolutely essential which is to be open. I need first to be aware to address a problem if I don't know it's impossible I cannot address the problem and I just have to kind of be the police what we don't want to be actually we don't want to be the police at least cop as should not be the police. If we are not aware and the only thing we can do is just okay let's be pragmatic here let's solve the problem as soon as we can so. The speaker is essential absolutely essential and again speaker will bring us back to our conversation a few minutes ago because the quality of the speaker is directly into everything we said before right if you take this from the company culture from the leadership behaviors attitude model that you install in organization. From quality of the dialogue that you promote from the openness that you install into each and every discussion not blaming people because they are bringing very valuable and candid comments around something and then when you. In a way reward at least recognize the value of the feedback provided by the people that ultimately are doing the job you are again in a much better place than if you don't do that. The short answer to your question is speaker speaker that is really the answer to that question now of course again it's a journey right it's not something that you declared something that you have to install and something that you need to promote something that you need to kind of help you know in terms of quality and delivery that sounds right. Absolutely and I love what you said before this that surprise is the enemy and I think surprise is not just the enemy for compliance the price is the enemy of the company the leadership as a whole. And I'm thinking if we have a strategy we have a vision we have objectives we have targets where we're going towards hopefully there's also clear reason why we should get there and then we have values that help guide path in that sense and what we shouldn't compromise on the journey but of course it's the question both of reaching the target but it's also the question of making sure that we don't get derailed along the way. And both of those are incredibly important so I love that aspect that's that surprise surprise is the enemy and yet I think so many times we are surprised so many times there are things that we didn't see and I think using Professor Margaret reference words like will full blindness oftentimes it might be things we should have seen should have understood should have known but we chose in a way to to turn our blind eye to to not be aware of. So when we talk about speak up and so of course we have speak up channels we have all those different things but I'm thinking as as a culture that what is important for us to create is a culture where speaking up in that sense is happening at all different levels and that is happening not just in more kind of extreme cases but it's happening continually and where there's really a practice of listening where at every level we are not assuming like you said that everything is well but we are assuming that there are concerns that we need to be aware of so we're asking for them. We're asking to see like where are we acting out of line with our values where are the dilemmas that we're facing where do people feel the pressure in a way that perhaps feels like it encourages the wrong behavior where do people you know perhaps not laugh at our policies but just you know feel like this is ridiculous they don't understand our reality. How do you look at kind of instilling that type of listening and speaking up kind of across an organization and what are some some of the learnings that you've had in your career on how to do that in a good way. You know we have to start maybe by realizing that everything you said is painful it's difficult to do because if we absolutely need to welcome speak up we have to recognize that it's not a good place to be right because most of the speak up are very controversial breaking topics that we don't really like or issues that we don't really like or you know or elements that we kind of say oh my god is that possible things like that. So the first thing to say is just to take it as an assume constraints that we need high quality speak up and we have to accept whatever is coming to us not necessarily saying that it's true. Well we have to differentiate of course everything but just accept in the fact that it's an assume constraint we need to have this we need to use it we need to leverage what we are hearing even if it's a little bit painful even if it's kind of redirected against whatever you know direction that company has set. I think that's very important to accept this and that's the reason why this speaker environment should be kind of protected against any form of influence or bad influence coming from anywhere we really need to be able to look at that and very calmly and very neutrally try to bring the conclusions that are coming from that. And that's for me a very important critical success factors we really need to kind of look at that from this angle of all of us that does one element the second element and I will come back again to run off the important aspect for me is also it's also all about leadership here because if you have a problem or if you have a significant problem let's assume it's a significant problem leadership should be involved it's not only about you know going to external legal console or compliance console or wherever. Yes they may bring you you know what good should look like at least on the paper but when you come to the execution it has to do with leaders right does to do with the leaders on the ground that are helping supporting managing people and again if we have a high quality dialogue with them we can bring good solutions and we can bring solutions that are sustainable because the other aspects that we should push is for sustainable solutions. It's not for something which is one off right it's very very important to kind of find a solutions that will stop the problem not only for the individual but potentially for you know a large group of people or maybe for the whole company if really it's relevant and this is where the dialogue should take place because it's not about the compliance rule it's not about the compliance policy it's not about a law it's about the behavior and when it's about behavior as you very well know you need to. You know that again that logic that says okay the behavior is not right and so you need to involve the whole cabinet and being them into that the same conclusion as your conclusion but speak up it's not something natural you know culture as you may guess. And this is a sound of the elements you know speaker culture in US in Europe in China in Japan in Africa I can completely different and we also have to recognize that and it's maybe maybe not the center of your question but actually I want to mention this because I really observe this quite a lot sometimes you have one speaker tool for your company and everybody is using the same tool or the same process but you don't get the same results depending on where you are. So in some regions and according to some culture it means that you should again run the extra mile to say okay am I really getting the reality on the ground from this region. Is it good to have zero elevation of concerns and by the way what is better is it better to have a lot of concerns or is it better to have zero concerns. And personally I'm not sure about the answer to that question because of course when you have a lot of concern you may argue that okay you have a lot of concern you may have a lot of problems but at the same time you have a very healthy elevation of concerns so you have a chance to back to my point to remove surprise from all of this. So you see it's not like black or white it depends if you have very very few concerns in the data you may again say okay I've zero concerns or maybe you have no problems fantastic I'm so happy. But should I question the quality of the speaker are people afraid. I think about elevating concerns are not convinced that we are going to do something about that which is also another element and speakers people are elevating concern and we do nothing about that again tell you up here sometimes they will stop they will simply start sure. And this is another elements that we should take for a self as a leadership is it's speak up is also important from the angle of what we do with the speaker. And even if we cannot get for confidentiality reasons whatever into all the details I think we should give a signal to the other organizations that we pay attention to what they are heading us that we do something about it some maybe visible some less let's accept this dilemma but it's important to show that we do something without. Again if we do that we engage into a very virtuous circle right we engage into something where people will say okay I see that whoever is behind this hotline is doing something about that my opinion is is important my opinion is taken into consideration I would feel much better to be in company like this at the company where you have a fantastic tool because it's mandatory by low. Nobody is doing nothing about that and of course this is also creating and I'm very prudent in using this word but this is about trust alternative you know do I trust that my company is going to do something about it do I trust that we all the values of my company exactly the one that are playing. And this is for me one of the center of the discussions very good I think what you said like it's so incredibly important I mean not just that we don't have the. That we don't have the fear of retaliation but that we have that people believe that we're actually going to act when you talk about serving fatigue and all those things that think often it's it's not really a server fatigue it's an in action fatigue people are fatigued with its sense that we're answering all these questions but nothing is happening. That's super helpful so we're coming to their kind of final parts of the this conversation and in my book you can culture talk about you know habits and practices that are key for leaders to build a cultural health and which really includes a culture of ethics or culture of integrity or that part of cultural health and my question to you is when you think about a habit or a practice that you would want leaders to really take hold of and do that you think is absolutely critical to this part of cultural health that we're speaking of here today what would that be. As I said I think there's a little bit of a chemistry here we want to be kind of candid and sincere on this so so it's difficult to tell you one elements I mentioned trust a few minutes ago. The trust is one of the elements that we use on a regular basis in we trust each other we create trust etc etc and that I was actually inspired by a book where I think it was trusted advisor so something like this something that was good title of this book and the authors brought something to me that was like a a wow moment and this is the trust equation I don't know how much you're familiar with that but at the end of the day something that was kind of making very pragmatic and in a very concrete way what trust is about because trust is a complex culture it's something that we all love in concept that we don't know what to do with it you know I trust you you trust me I trust my company with what does that mean in reality what trust is about they brought together this trust that was really a wow moment for me because then I all of a sudden I realize what I should be doing myself to kind of create some form of trust in the organization and maybe this is applicable to all of us so trust equation is the sum of credibility plus real ability plus intimacy divided by self orientation so in other words the more you are credible the more you create trust so how can I be credible as a leader as a companion's person as a leader as a CEO whatever the answer to the question is important reality of course it's important because if I'm speaking and I'm doing nothing at some point in time to our previous point we have also to work to talk we have really to show that it's not a concept is something that we apply intimacy is important I need to understand your problem have my problem that I need to understand your problem and the more I show that understand your problem the more I'm placing myself in a situation that they will feel that I'm interested in that problem and I can maybe solve it divided by self orientation of course if I'm just looking at my own goals subjective I do not care about others I will not install trust people will say okay this guy is just interested by himself and end of the story this equation was kind of summarizing something that I was trying to materialize in a way and another because I think everything we said today has to do with this trust equation at the level of this you at the level of the leaders at the level of herself as a kind of guardian of the temple we need to install that trust with each other the more we are capable to install that trust with each other the more we'll be able to action everything we said before but all the rest is just a consequence but if we don't install that trust beforehand I feel that is going to be very very difficult to kind of achieve our goals and as we say it's a joy so it's not like we reach a point where we say okay I'm done I can be in the place I don't think so I think it's going to be a non-going challenge and maybe new challenges will come also from a business perspective we know that the business environment is not getting very friendly these days for a variety of reasons and so we have just to recognize that everybody is under incredible pressure incredible pressure so let's recognize that this is exactly what the trust equation is telling you I need to understand your problem I need to recognize that if you are in the field you are under pressure you have this expectations formed around your performance for very obvious reasons right so I need to understand that but when I'm speaking with you as an employee I need also to show that I'm capable to do something about it and capable and incredible to do something so I think if we are able to your question to install this in a way or another at all levels organization we may have a chance to really get where we like to be at least we kind of regroup all the critical success factors to be where we like to be but you know it's a joy so it's something that we simply need to recognize for sure and that is super super helpful Stephen and I think this concept of trust is so central because I think I mean trust is we know that it's business critical I think it's also the most important form of leadership capital and without it we don't have really any capital I would say and when you think about trust and professor Sandra Sutcher at Harvard I started it for decades and written books on it and I have interviewed her for my book and one of the things that she talks about that trust that it hinges on the fact that we're seen as competent and so on but another element as well is that we're seeing us taking full responsibility for all the impacts of our actions I think this is a really critical point and I think it's connected to your point as well of empathy of empathy because empathy is actually an important cornerstone of an ethical culture or cultural health the ethical element or cultural health in that sense and sometimes I think as leaders and especially perhaps at the higher levels of an organization we make decisions with good intentions or let's say perhaps sometimes it's mixed intentions but at least it's not bad intentions that we're out to harm anyone but those decisions still cause harm and maybe a society effect that people that might be in reorgs that might be in all you know and having the empathy of for what are people going through what are they experiencing as a part of it not as a fake exercise because I think we see a lot of that in the world today the fake language around empathy and saying things but at the same time we don't actually take responsibility for the impacts of our actions but I think if we're willing to do that and then I think then also looking at how is this really impacting for example if we think the people who are out in the field what dilemmas is this creating for them and I love something that Frank Blake who was the CEO at the Home Depot some years ago told me that as senior leaders we need to take grasp the complexity so that we can send out more clarity and I think so many times we put the complexity out there we let people just you know navigate the dilemmas on their own and we don't really want to hear what they are and we just say just do your job deliver on your numbers and we don't understand for example like you say that what that might look like in South Africa might be very different than what it looks like in the headquarter in Germany or yeah wherever else that might be so I think that is so so important so thank you so much for raising that Stephen we're coming to a close in this conversation is there something that you felt we did not talk about that you just feel you would like to share maybe as an encouragement maybe as an idea maybe as something as you said before we're in a time where the pressure is incredibly high and what is maybe a thought reflection encouragement that you would like to give and we start by saying what is fantastic in that conversation I think we start by saying it's all about people and we finish in a way and listening to your comment that it's all about people actually it's exactly what you said right in a way and another maybe I'm kind of probably simplifying it but I think this is really something that we simply need to recognize and if we accept this then all the rest is relatively easy to address you know it's really about being human it's about accepting diversity and we mentioned diversity but I think diversity in organization is absolutely critical also absorb the new answers the different opinions the judgments and to appreciate the situations in a way that is not like one side fits all because I think that's sometimes also the bit of a problem except also mistakes right because we are humans it's all about people and humans may make mistakes and that's simple as that and we have just have to recognize that and accept that and that's what I like the conversation is that at the end of the day if we apply some human principles we'll mention empathy and some other elements we are already in a very good place if we accept dialogue if we accept communication if we accept kind of very good discussions around the different topics we are in a much better place to improve either ourselves as individuals or organizations my final word will be well I hope you heard my action by this topic I think it's one of the topics that I believe is so crucial for a chief capacity officer that I'm always very very key that open to discuss this with my peers and colleagues I think this is a very important topic far away from you know our regular topics around policies regulations, lows, whatever but it's so crucial, so crucial because I really think that this is what is going to make a difference one element that I'm still promoting and I know it's a bit like provocative I continue to believe the complainants may bring a competitive advantage to confidence in their capable to use that properly again it's all about people you know what is the competitive advantage of people you may argue it's not products of course but you know what they are providing to their clients yes for sure but all of this is owned and managed by people right so if you are capable to organize this and to have a look at this from this angle you may create a very good and competitive advantage and I want people to be convinced that at the end of the day it's not philosophical compliance is also about helping the business to perform with integrity of course but to perform right we're not here to create barriers we're not here to create problems but if we don't do this kind of homework around what we should be doing in terms of what is our culture what is potentially a roadblock what we're potentially we have issues and if we don't do every day but I would call the rate face test and we have to accept the result of this rate face test if we do that every day will be in a much better place but I'm very optimistic I think I've started this conversation by saying I've seen tons of improvements the last couple of years which is good I think the industry in general is really moving in that direction which is good and I hope that it will continue like this but I'm very optimistic about getting there and of course it's about good communication it's about right tone it's about working to talk it's about always said today but I think in a much better place for sure Stephen thank you so much thank you for this conversation and thank you also for everything that you do as a person who really invest a lot in the function and in spreading your experience and just supporting the industry as well around the topics of ethics and integrity so thank you so much for that and I know people can connect with you and LinkedIn so encourage people to do that and thank you Stephen thank you Tobis and join the conversation as well thanks a lot thank you so much for listening if you enjoyed this conversation it really means the world just if you would share rate and review it on iTunes we're super grateful for all the five star reviews and generous comments that we received so far it really helps us take the message of purpose and integrity to a wider audience and finally don't forget to grab your free PDF on leading transformationalchange.com See you in two weeks.