adminis the principal of Compliance Strategists, LLC, renowned international speaker and expert in Ethical Leadership Development, Corporate Ethics and Compliance Donna Boehme.
Other speakers include Coeni van Beek, a coach and site leader of PwC’s Executive Leadership Development Programme, Genesis Park; and Joseph Murphy, who authored numerous books on organisational ethics. These include “501 Ideas for Your Compliance and Ethics Programme” and a “Compliance and Ethics Programme for a Dollar a Day”.
In this week’s instalment I would like to publish an article written by Donna Boehme, and first published in the July/August 2012 edition of Compliance & Ethics Professional, a publication of the Society of Corporate Compliance and Ethics in the USA. The article is reproduced with her permission.
“While ‘tone at the top’ has become a strong fashionable phrase to use in business talk, to me its application has remained more like nails-on-the-chalkboard. And that’s because companies so often misfire on both ‘tone’ and ‘top’.
“First, real tone is achieved by visible action, not mere words. CEO speeches, sustainability report, posters — that’s the easy part, but you knew that already. Sometimes I wish boards and CEOs would just stop talking, and start doing.
“Second, what do we mean by ‘top’? According to a 2011 Booz & Company study, the median tenure of an operationally involved CEO is only 4,9 years. So I am hanging the whole ‘tone’ thing on the board, and not on the CEO, because the board stays and the CEO leaves. The board sets the tone, and the CEO carries it out.
“Tone is not just a CEO memo directed to staff; it’s the CEO taking an unannounced safety tour of a manufacturing plant. Tone is not the Press release trumpeting the appointment of a new Chief Ethics and Compliance Officer; it’s the board demanding strategic positioning, empowerment, and resources for that role, with sufficient autonomy to stand up to powerful institutional forces.
“Tone is not the Code of Conduct, but a public dismissal of a senior manager who has violated that code.
“Tone is what people talk about around the water cooler, because of the direct and indirect signals the board and line management have driven through the organisation.
“Tone is what behaviour is rewarded at performance review and bonus time. Tone is who gets promoted, and why. Tone is the agenda at the annual senior leadership meeting.
“If it’s done right, tone becomes ethical culture, and ethical culture becomes the standard operating protocol of the organisation. When boards begin to embrace ownership of tone and culture, with the same deliberative energy as CEO succession, strategy and risk — that’s when we’ll see some progress.
“I long for the time when ‘tone at the top’ actually means something, but right now, at the end of the day, it’s still nails-on-the-chalkboard for me.”
l Bradwell Mhonderwa is an Ethics Coach and Trainer with the Business Ethics Centre. Send feedback to [email protected],or visit www.businessethicscentre.co.zw, or call 0772 913 875
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