Trust Across America-Trust Around the World™

This is a timely article about what trust is and what it isn’t! 

www.fcpablog.com/blog/2019/1/24/five-stupid-ideas-about-trust-in-business.html

2019 began with a trust “bang” when Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff announced a new position in his company. Essentially, after some deep soul searching, this CEO recognizes that most large organizations, including the tech sector, have a trust problem and he is committed to solving that. Marc is one of a small yet growing cadre of enlightened leaders, and with the appointment of Paula Goldman from Omidyar Network, Salesforce now has a Chief Ethics and Humane Use Officer.

I recently asked a few of Trust Across America’s Trust Council members  to weigh in on how Paula can be most effective in her new role.

Donna Boehme who heads Compliance Strategists and has been a leading voice for Compliance 2.0 had this to say:

As the CEO says, it’s been “dark days” for the tech industry, which is by no means an overstatement. With so much change leading to an aggregation of power in the big tech companies, the industry is long overdue for a reckoning. By appointing a senior executive to begin to manage such issues at his company, the CEO is demonstrating intuitive foresight and risk assessment. I also imagine he has seen the disasters that befall companies that fail to value ethical leadership and culture as a key company asset.

That’s quite a high minded and open-ended title to the extent it opens the door to confusion and misinterpretation. Ms. Goldman should do what I often coach new chief compliance and ethics officers (CECOs) to do: refine her title and ensure she has a clear written mandate for the role that is understood and agreed by all of senior management.

In that vein, Bob Whipple at Leadergrow had similar advice for Paula:

Make sure to have clarity of your role.  Many a “Chief Ethical Officer” has found out that he or she is ultimately like an appendix. I have always believed that ethical culture is a line rather than a staff function. Also, try to figure out what “humane use” really means.

Back to Donna Boehme…

A clear written mandate is the key to empowerment for those in these roles…including a clarification of the respective roles of others (HR, Legal, Audit, etc.) supporting the program to avoid redundancy and gaps. The future… hinges on robust collaboration and coordination by all who support related activities, which is why the written mandate and collaboration tools are important. I go by the well-established compliance maxim  of “If everyone is responsible for feeding the dog, the dog starves.”

Another early area of concentration for anyone new to this role is to establish key peer and mentor networks to support them as they navigate the often rocky waters in which any new function/executive must exist and succeed. 

The challenges for BigTech feel analogous to those faced by the defense industry in the 80’s, and it seems natural that a shared endeavor to address the risks of compliance and culture could prove as productive and proactively beneficial as the early Defense Industry Initiative did for BigDefense in the 80’s.

I also turned to Bob Vanourek, at Triple Crown Leadership, a former CEO of several major companies who offered this advice:

As the first steps in her new role as Salesforce’s first Chief Ethical and Humane Use Officer, Paula Goldman should:

1. Seek input from multitudes of sources inside and outside the company as to the ethical and humane issues that are frothing to the surface in the coming years.
2. Enlist a large cross-section of volunteers from inside and outside the firm who agree to think deeply about these issues and offer their counsel on how to deal with them. These volunteers should be wildly diverse in age, gender, disciplines, experience, political views, and other areas of difference.
3. Assemble a small group of volunteer colleagues inside the firm to crystalize and summarize the input and views from above to discuss with her superiors at Salesforce with recommendations on the top few issues on which Salesforce wishes to take an initial public stand.

And finally, Stephen M.R. Covey who needs no introduction, offered these valuable insights:

This will not be easy for Paula because people often view differently what they perceive as right and wrong when it comes to policy decisions, and it can especially become contested when it comes to matters that are (or might become) politicized. In other words, there could be more than one right answer. If that’s the case, then focusing on establishing agreed upon criteria and process would seem to be among the highest leveraged initial steps she should take, including: 

1. Focus on establishing criteria for her committee’s framework that includes making the creation, preservation, and enhancement of trust—externally and internally—an explicit objective, i.e., “How will this decision affect our trust in society? In the marketplace?  In the workplace?, etc.”
2. Focus on establishing criteria that recognizes the fundamental needs (economic, social, intellectual, purpose) of ALL stakeholders, and seek to establish a dynamic process of attempting to assess and ultimately balance these needs and stakeholders.
3. Create a process for internal feedback and discussion so as to be open and transparent inside the organization so that even if some people might disagree with the decision, they might still have felt heard and understood (even if not agreed).
4. “Declare your intent” as to what you’re doing, and especially why you’re doing it, so as to be clear and transparent about agenda and motive.

As the CEO of Trust Across America-Trust Around the World, I offer Paula the following:

1. Our TAP program, guiding principles developed over the course of the past year by our global Trust Alliance, and currently accessed over 30,000 times. These Principles, available in 16 languages, can elevate trust in any organization of any size. We have recently completed Phase #2 providing a series of discussion questions for implementing each Principle.

2. Our research on the intersection of trust and profitability, should anyone should ask the question “Why trust?”

A few closing questions:

• Should Paula Goldman be reporting to the Chief Equality Officer or someone else?

• Will Paula’s role simply be to ensure that new technology initiatives remain ethically “compliant” or will the position go beyond this somewhat limited scope?

While our ten years researching the trustworthiness of public companies points to the conclusion that “no company is perfect,” how exciting to start 2019 with this news from a visionary leader in the tech sector. Well done. Now the “hard” work starts.

You can read Marc Benioff’s announcement at this CNBC link.

Barbara Brooks Kimmel is an award-winning communications executive and the CEO and Cofounder of Trust Across America-Trust Around the World whose mission is to help organizations build trust. A former consultant to McKinsey and many Fortune 500 CEOs and their firms, Barbara also runs the world’s largest global Trust Alliance, and is the editor of the award-winning TRUST INC. book series and TRUST! Magazine. In 2012 she was named one of “25 Women who are Changing the World” by Good Business International, and in 2017 she became a Fellow of the Governance & Accountability Institute. Barbara holds a BA in International Affairs and an MBA. Don’t forget to TAP into Trust!

For more information contact barbara@trustacrossamerica.com

Copyright(c) 2019, Next Decade, Inc.

Trust Across America-Trust Around the World’s free

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Around this time every year, the news “treats us” to the top leadership failures, and 2018 is certainly no exception. “The trust buck” certainly stopped on the CEO’s desk at Facebook, Uber and Theranos, to name just a few.

While the media may continue to believe that only “bad” sells,  I launched Trust Across America-Trust Around the World more than ten years ago, with one objective of directing attention to the “good” because their stories rarely get told. Perhaps they are just too “good” to get air time, and just maybe the media is ignoring the stories that people want to hear.

This list is not about CEOs taking stands, feel good philanthropy, “check the box sustainability” or CSR projects, but rather about high integrity leaders who believe that a long-term holistically trustworthy strategy will positively impact ALL stakeholders.

Top Ten Stories of 2018

(presented alphabetically)

• *Chip Bergh runs Levi Strauss and continues his focus on building a long-term culture with great success. (And BTW: Chip and I share the Lafayette College alma mater.
• Many people like to throw darts at Jeff Bezos at Amazon for “disrupting” retail, yet he also gives back in a big way. This is his newest preschool initiative.
• Larry Fink Blackrock’s CEO rattled the business world in his letter to CEOs by announcing a new model for corporate governance.
• David Kleis is St. Cloud Minnesota’s longest serving Mayor, who, over the past 3 years, has been hosting monthly dinners at his house and almost 700 town halls to get to know his constituents, complete with a mobile bus!
• *Rose Marcario at Patagonia is using the company’s $10 million tax break to help save the planet.
• *David Reiling is CEO of St. Paul-based Sunrise Banks. Under his leadership, Sunrise became Minnesota’s first bank certified as a community development financial institution, a legal benefit corporation, and a member of the Global Alliance of Banking on Values. As David says “At the end of the day, if the community succeeds, we will be able to thrive along with them.”
• Physician Kylie Vannaman runs MDPCA (Midwest Direct Primary Care Alliance) a group that is buying back medical bills from those who cannot afford to pay them.
• Martin Van Trieste, a former Amgen executive is the CEO of Civica RX. Never heard of them? This mission driven company plans to stabilize the soaring costs of prescription drugs.
• Bob Wilson an 89-year old California business owner just wrote 1085 checks, each for $1000. Find out why.
• Jeff Yurcisin, a former Amazon executive who recently became president of Zulily, talks about why trust is the #1 leadership imperative.

Let’s celebrate these trustworthy leaders and their organizations. Let’s work together to continue to build organizational trust in 2019.

* Chip Bergh, Rose Marcario and David Reiling also appeared on this list in 2018.

Barbara Brooks Kimmel is the CEO and Cofounder of Trust Across America-Trust Around the World whose mission is to help organizations build trust. She also runs the world’s largest global Trust Alliance and is the editor of the award- winning TRUST INC. book series. In 2017 she was named a Fellow of the Governance & Accountability Institute, and in 2012 she was recognized as one of “25 Women who are Changing the World” by Good Business International. She holds a BA in International Affairs from Lafayette College and an MBA from Baruch at the City University of NY.

For more information visit our website at www.trustacrossamerica.com or contact Barbara Brooks Kimmel, CEO and Cofounder

Barbara@trustacrossamerica.com

You may also join our Constant Contact mailing list for updates on our progress.

In celebration of the 10th anniversary of Trust Across America-Trust Around the World, our global Trust Alliance “elves” have spent the year hammering away at new (and free) tools to elevate organizational trust in any organization regardless of size, location or industry.

We are happy to provide our readers with “12 days of organizational trust resources.”

Ten years ago, in the wake of the financial crisis, I undertook a study of organizational trust. Ten years later, and with the assistance of hundreds of global experts, I offer the following observations gleaned over the past decade.

Organizational trust is built over time and in incremental steps. There are simply no shortcuts.

Trust facts:

Organizational trust is an “inside out” strategy built through…

1. A shared purpose and tactical vision acknowledging all stakeholders, not just shareholders
2. A high integrity/high accountability board and CEO
3. Long-term and corporate-wide intentional trust building strategies
4. Daily reinforcement
5. Hiring (and firing) in accordance with corporate values
6. Rejection of hidden agendas
7. Vulnerability and a willingness to admit mistakes
8. Transparency, truth telling and promises kept
9. Rewarding moral character
10. Trust measurement and tracking

Recently my colleagues and I have witnessed some “sloppy” use of the word “trust” via short-term thinking attempts to provide quick and easy illusory measurements and solutions.

Trust Fiction:

Trust is not built through…

1. Delegation of trust building to middle management or online ethics training modules
2. Expensive and slick PR or “branding” campaigns
3. CEO activism unrelated to the business
4. CSR “one off” projects and ESG “check the box” practices
5. Self-fulfilling surveys, reports and “best of” awards
6. Philanthropy
7. Empty apologies, lots of talk and little action
8. Social media “strategies” and buzz words
9. More rules and larger legal departments
10. Short-term share price action

There are no short-term solutions to building a trustworthy business. Attempting to cut corners not only wastes time and resources but damages reputation.  For those Boards and CEOs who want to learn more, check back next week when we offer 12 free tools to elevate trust in every organization, regardless of size, industry or location.

Barbara Brooks Kimmel is an award-winning communications executive and the CEO and Cofounder of Trust Across America-Trust Around the World whose mission is to help organizations build trust. A former consultant to McKinsey and many Fortune 500 CEOs and their firms, Barbara also runs the world’s largest global Trust Alliance, and is the editor of the award-winning TRUST INC. book series and TRUST! Magazine. In 2012 she was named one of “25 Women who are Changing the World” by Good Business International, and in 2017 she became a Fellow of the Governance & Accountability Institute. Barbara holds a BA in International Affairs and an MBA. Don’t forget to TAP into Trust!

For more information contact barbara@trustacrossamerica.com

Copyright(c) 2018, Next Decade, Inc.

Trust Across America’s FACTS® Framework: Fast Facts

(a summary of our 10th anniversary 46-page report “Trust & Integrity in Corporate America 2018” )

Introduction: Developed by a cross-silo multidisciplinary team, and in the wake of the financial crisis in 2008, the Framework evolved with the goal of creating a long-term model to reduce corporate risk and maximize profitability by measuring trust. With the assistance of professionals from leadership, compliance and ethics, governance, accounting, finance, HR, consulting, corporate social responsibility, ESG, sustainability, and other disciplines, FACTS® was finalized in 2010.

Methodology: Now in its 9th year, Trust Across America performs an independent annual analysis using its rigorous and unique FACTS® Framework. Companies do not participate, nor do they know they are being analyzed.

How we define trust: A byproduct of strong core values that are practiced and reinforced daily.

The FACTS® Framework:

The Framework incorporates proprietary metrics and measures the trust “worthiness” of public companies based on five equally weighted indicators that form the FACTS® acronym: Financial stability, Accounting Conservativeness, Corporate Integrity, Transparency & Sustainability. Additional screens may include but are not limited to fines and violations, percentage of women on the board, CEO pay ratios and tenure, employee reviews and news. Our analysis has never identified a “perfect” company. In fact, on our 1-100 scale, it is unusual for a company to score above an 80%. In 2018, 103 companies in the Russell 1000 scored a 70% or above. The full list is provided in our research report.

Measuring Outcomes and Impacts: On average, and over the long-term, the “Top 10″ most trustworthy public companies have outperformed the S&P 500 by over 25% since inception. In each of the six full years, the selected group has had a higher return than the S&P 500. (June, 2018)

Sector analysis: FACTS® data is sorted by sector and the following chart represents the sector rankings for the Russell 1000 for 2018. FACTS® uses Zacks Investment Research that divides date into 16 sectors. Others like S&P and Morningstar sometimes place companies in different sectors. For example, Zacks financial sector includes banks, insurance companies, REITS and brokerage firms, to name just a few.

Comparability: FACTS is a unique proprietary model measuring the trustworthiness of America’s largest (2000+) public companies. Other measurements of trust tend to be silo specific and qualitative, while FACTS® is quantitative and objective.

For more information: Barbara Brooks Kimmel, CEO & Cofounder

Barbara@trustacrossamerica.com

Copyright © 2018, Next Decade, Inc.

(A condensed version of this article first appeared on The FCPA Blog)

Recently, the newly appointed CEO of Novartis, Vas Narasimhan, announced that he would be linking employee bonuses to ethics as part of a strategy to rebuild the company’s reputation. Specifics of the scoring system were not divulged. This raises some interesting questions in the trust, ethics and compliance community. Among them, is it ethical to pay people to act ethically or is it a form of bribery? Will these bonuses elevate ethical behavior? What is the minimum “acceptable” behavioral standard to receive a bonus? We asked Trust Across America’s 12-member Trust Council to weigh in. Some of their best answers from both a macro and micro perspective, are provided below.

Ethics is a Company Wide Issue

At Datron, we spend a lot of time in the FCPA world as over 90% of our business is conducted outside the US.  We find that ethics is a company wide issue that encompasses not only your employees but also any organization that represents us in the marketplace.  We have not taken the route of rewarding ethical behavior at the employee level.  We spend the money on training, both in the compliance area and in the “servant” leadership area to ensure that everyone understands the company mission, purpose and how our behaviors (values) are reflected in the work we do.  In our multi-cultural company with over 80 representatives around the world we take compliance to all entities that interface with our customers at any level.  This means that our annual FCPA training is required and annual anti-bribery statements are completed by both employees and our representative companies.  In addition we require all of our representatives to hold current Trace International certifications.  If these items are not completed as required we don’t do business with that organization and don’t let our employee interface with the customer.

In general I would recommend that leaders know what would work best for their organizations.  I personally would not take the approach Novartis has taken just because paying money for a required behavior is too much like a bribe and I believe it sends the wrong message to the organization.  It also says that it is ok to act unethically we just won’t provide you a bonus if you do.  I think requiring behavior in accordance with the company values is a better long-term solution.

I believe that a focus on culture, understanding why it is important for the organization to conduct itself in accordance with it’s core values and spending training dollars to ensure this each and every day is a better investment than providing an annual bonus award.  Art Barter

Influencing Human Behavior

This approach is a good idea for Novartis. We can’t change human nature—there will always be some unethical people. But we can influence human behavior. We influence human behavior through many means: education and training, personal examples and role models, good leadership, shared norms and values, rewards and punishments, and more. Good companies reward (or punish) employees with scoring systems for both achieving goals (results) and “how” those goals are achieved. Scoring a 1 on values and behavior at Novartis (1 = below expectations) makes an employee ineligible to receive a bonus and likely signals they may face demotion or termination. It is a realistic way to grab people’s attention that unethical behavior will no longer be tolerated at this firm. Bob Vanourek

Systematizing Ethical Practices

I applaud Novartis’ efforts to encourage and systematize ethical behavior. Behaving ethically should be the “ticket of admission” for even having a job, but many organizations don’t view it that way. Novartis is taking proactive steps to enforce consequences for salespeople who don’t meet expectations. Randy Conley

Innovation is Key

To determine the best ways to make progress on the trust, transparency and ethics road we have to innovate. To develop proven, repeatable and scalable strategies we all have to be bold enough to try. Novartis is trying. We don’t know the context or risk appetite they are working from so it is hard to objectively review their strategy. To innovate well we have to accept failure and partial successes, learn, pivot and go at it again. The fact that organizations are trying is, in my mind, the thing of value. They will engage in many critical conversations around this project and that dialogue with their employees, partners and board is priceless in the fight for ethics. Deb Krizmanich

Discussing Ethics

Ethical performance — good or bad — is an intrinsic aspect of organizational culture, While company value statements, codes of conduct and compliance training are essential components of an ethical culture, even more important is how organizations react to ethical dilemmas and lapses.  When discussions about ethics are taboo, and individuals are rewarded for unethically achieved results, the culture quickly adapts to this reality without regard to official policy.  In this respect, Novartis is on the right track by explicitly withholding rewards for employees who behave unethically.  Even more telling will be whether discussion of ethics is normalized and unethical behaviors consistently derail careers at the company. Barton Alexander

Payments for Behaving Ethically

There is something prima facie anti-ethical about paying people money to behave ethically. If you have to be paid to be ethical, you’re not. And by reducing ethics to behavioral inducements, the system devalues the ethicality of all actions, regardless of their objective desirability. This reduces ethics to the category of compliance and sales quotas. Charles H. Green

The Devil is in the Details 

Whether the Novartis plan is a good idea to resolve the ethical dry rot is debatable. The devil is in the details, but I would raise a caution flag.  Essentially they are saying that meeting expectations or being a role model for ethical behavior will earn employees extra pay, while not meeting expectations means you get no extra pay, and it could lead to termination. I also do not agree that bringing in Klaus Moosmayer from Siemens to be the ethics tsar is going to make up for poor leadership at the top. Bob Whipple

A further Internet search of the Novartis bonus “plan” revealed the following “anonymous” comment:

This has been in place for over two years. Probably just touting this in the news because of all the recent violations. Reps don’t get an additional bonus. They have money withheld from each bonus period and if their manager sees fit and gives them a good rating, they may or may not get all the money back. So Novartis actually takes money and holds it for a year. Some reps get back more but a lot will actually get back less. The kicker is, they have to still be employed to get that money and it’s only paid out once a year and it’s supposed to be about values and behaviors but it’s still tied to sales. 

The Trust Council jury is split with regard to the ethics of ethics bonuses. To be meaningful ethics and trust must remain a top-down strategy built from the inside out, and only then will they have a long-term impact on organizational reputation.

Trust Across America-Trust Around the World’s Trust Council is an invitation-only advisory group comprised of global business leaders and consultants from a broad cross section of industries and functions who are rotated through membership in our Trust Alliance. The Council serves for twelve months.

Barbara Brooks Kimmel is an award-winning communications executive and the CEO and Cofounder of Trust Across America-Trust Around the World whose mission is to help organizations build trust. A former consultant to McKinsey and many Fortune 500 CEOs and their firms, Barbara also runs the world’s largest global Trust Alliance, and is the editor of the award-winning TRUST INC. book series and TRUST! Magazine. In 2012 she was named one of “25 Women who are Changing the World” by Good Business International, and in 2017 she became a Fellow of the Governance & Accountability Institute. Barbara holds a BA in International Affairs and an MBA. Don’t forget to TAP into Trust!

For more information contact barbara@trustacrossamerica.com

The following information can be found in the first ten pages of our new 46-page report “Trust & Integrity in Corporate America.” It is the culmination of ten years of research on the impact of trust on business success.

The common assumption is high integrity and trust simply “exist” at the individual, team and organizational level, yet dozens of surveys and studies show otherwise.

• MIT concludes that leadership trustworthiness produces better results than competence.
• A Deloitte study found that only 42% of CEOs and 50% of board members have discussed risks to their organization’s reputations in the past year. Also, 53% of CEOs and 46% of board members can’t identify events that can damage their organization’s reputation.
• Gallup reports that only 46 percent of disengaged employees trust management.
• Ernst & Young surveyed 10,000 workers ages 19 to 68 in eight countries revealed that just 46% of employees placed “a great deal of trust” in their employer, and only 49% placed “a great deal of trust” in their manager or colleagues.

These and dozens of other studies, graphs, data, statistics and tools to elevate trust at the individual, team and leadership levels are included in this report.

Early reviews have been outstanding: