Knowing what to choose is hard, especially when you have little (or no positive) experience. I see this frequently, including:
- Third-party management systems
- Due diligence
- Training platforms and content
- Case management systems
- Speak up and reporting tools
- Monitoring and detection (data analytics, etc.)
- Risk assessment systems
How might some of my startup mistakes help you avoid similar pitfalls?
Keeping Up With The Jokes
Not having a nice website is startup suicide, or so I thought. While a (hopefully) professional-looking shop front is sensible, I’ve realised it’s not always the best conduit for communication. For that, you need options reflecting our differing needs. You’ve heard how we all learn differently. I see it in the interaction and visitor data. Some of you relate to long-form content, others to imagery, and some to audio (visual) content.
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For core content, like a Code (of conduct, business ethics, etc.), making it available across varied communication channels might help increase engagement. If that sounds like a lot of work, it is a bit. But still a lot less than people not reading the Code and getting into trouble. You might also use your multi-channelled Code as a stealth vehicle for other risk & compliance wins, including:
- Short (90-second to 3-minute) video snippets with senior leaders discussing ethical dilemmas they faced across the topics covered in the Code. These ethics moments humanise leaders, make them more relatable, and bring the topic some relevance.
- Introduce ethics ambassadors as you localise the code, giving people a go-to person for the inevitable questions (many prefer talking to humans rather than searching Sharepoints).
- Link processes to checklists, visuals, cheat sheets, flowcharts, and the rest, to help the visual learners make sense of the text.
Don’t Call Us; We’ll Call You
People want to interact with you on their terms. Shocking, I know. It took me four years to sensibly codify this approach into a Linktree
LINKTREE IMAGE
Most of us like to test people out before trusting them. In risk & compliance, we’re essentially selling trust. “Let me help you… where do you face challenges… tell me your problems and secrets.” That’s hard to do via one medium. We need to meet the readers, talkers, and listeners across their preferred channels of communication.
We need to be patient. Initially, I wasn’t. I was susceptible to bad advice, as I didn’t know what I didn’t know. In year one, especially, we spent way more than we should on cold outreach campaigns and LinkedIn advertising. It led to near-no work and probably annoyed a lot of people. A lot of risk & compliance content seems to revolve around smashing into people’s email inboxes with alarmist statements. How effective is that? How many people get in touch with you after such campaigns?
I’m not suggesting we don’t (sometimes) need to arrest attention. From my experience (for whatever that’s worth), allowing people to kick the tyres (read, hear, and watch my/our stuff) works better. They can take the days, weeks, or months needed to decide whether or not you’re someone they might trust.
Fractious Exchanges
Have you heard marketing people use the word “friction”? It’s helpful. The aim in good marketing is to relieve the pain (friction) for the prospective customer. This is why apps let you login using Google, Apple, or Facebook, as they know it’s less painful than typing all your data again.
If you are one of the people who view vendors with an element of superiority (they should be grateful to work for us), be careful. By making someone’s life harder than it need be you erode goodwill. Goodwill often translates into the additional value you never asked for but benefits hugely.
Connection Matters
As Ethics Insight matured, I was advised I’d need a professionalised CRM (customer relationship management) system. We built content for “funnels” and alike. Essentially emails and marketing we’d hope people would find amusing but was created well in advance and designed to lead the person (who’d signed up, downloaded, or otherwised engaged) to buy.
It was a HUGE waste of time. Our work comes from referrals, people who read/see/hear content and like it, and speaking engagements at events. In four years, I can count on the fingers of one hand the engagements that stemmed from someone finding us online and coming in cold. I ditched the CRM and went back to things like this newsletter (and the email one ). Hear, people can engage.
Moving from Singapore to the UK, we also had to change accounting systems and back office support. A largely impersonal and automated system was replaced with a human who helps me with the systems. The added value they provide on everything from tax to travel has been revelatory. In risk & compliance terms, it’s like someone who helps me understand:
- How my risk assessment data compares to industry or country averages.
- What numbers and data (machine learning, blah blah) mean in my monitoring and analytics.
- Speak up data in comparative terms (volume, response rates, response times, issues, etc.).
The trick, my accountants, payroll, and finance support don’t speak to me every day, or even week. They schedule regular check-ins with clear agendas and add value. The hours a year they spend, I imagine, saves days of answering my questions by email (or other automation).
Tech is great. Tech with teaching is best.
Questions For You
I’ll leave it there with the analogies, and sum up with three questions:
- Are we communicating across multiple channels (building trust and capacity)?
- Can we reduce friction in our processes?
- Would a bit more face time reduce a lot of waste time?
Many programmatic elements of risk management and ethics & compliance seem to cause more pain than gain—management systems, monitoring tools, analytics, due diligence, onboarding frameworks, etc.
How might we get back to some (human) basics, save time (in the medium term), and build trust?