Thursday, December 5, 2019
Corporate Compliance Insights
  • Home
    • Home
  • About
    • About CCI
    • Writing for CCI
    • Advertise With Us
  • Articles
    • See All Articles
    • Compliance
    • Ethics
    • Risk
    • FCPA
    • Governance
    • Fraud
    • Audit
    • HR Compliance
    • Cybersecurity
    • Data Privacy
    • Financial Services
    • Leadership and Career
  • Industry News
  • Jobs
  • Events
    • Webinars & Events
    • Submit an Event
  • Downloads
    • eBooks
    • Whitepapers
  • Podcasts
  • Videos
  • Subscribe
No Result
View All Result
  • Home
    • Home
  • About
    • About CCI
    • Writing for CCI
    • Advertise With Us
  • Articles
    • See All Articles
    • Compliance
    • Ethics
    • Risk
    • FCPA
    • Governance
    • Fraud
    • Audit
    • HR Compliance
    • Cybersecurity
    • Data Privacy
    • Financial Services
    • Leadership and Career
  • Industry News
  • Jobs
  • Events
    • Webinars & Events
    • Submit an Event
  • Downloads
    • eBooks
    • Whitepapers
  • Podcasts
  • Videos
  • Subscribe
No Result
View All Result
Corporate Compliance Insights
Home Compliance

Navigating the Chaos of the Marketplace

by Jim Nortz
August 25, 2016
in Compliance
Addressing compliance risk in the real world

In November, 2015, I had the pleasure of returning to India on a business trip. I had several days of meetings scheduled with my colleagues in Mumbai and stayed at the Leela Hotel near our offices.

Although the office was only about 10 miles from the hotel, a car and a driver were hired to ferry me to and from work during my visit – not because the office was difficult to find – but, instead, because Indian traffic requires a special set of navigation skills that most foreigners lack – beyond knowing how to drive on the left side of the road.

This became evident the moment we departed from the hotel grounds onto the city streets. Without the benefit of a traffic light, and with hardly a glance to see if there were oncoming vehicles, the driver barreled out of the hotel driveway plunging directly into the middle of a torrent of traffic. Horn blaring, the driver apparently expected that all five lanes of cars, motorbikes, three-wheeled taxis, buses, ox carts, cyclists and pedestrians would yield as he fearlessly cut across the road to make a turn onto the other side of the road.

Astonishingly, despite a chorus of protesting horns, this Kamikaze maneuver worked. We not only made it across safely, we made a similar dive into the thick stream of traffic on the other side of the road. That was just the start of an eye-popping journey. Five to seven lanes of vehicles (it was hard to tell how many) shoe-horned themselves into a two-lane road and vied for every square inch of pavement while thousands of pedestrians and animals blithely wandered in and among the vehicles. Bedlam, anarchy, havoc, pandemonium, mayhem, commotion are all words that fall far short of capturing the unbridled chaos of the scene from the moment we left the hotel to when we pulled into the office driveway. The amazing thing, though, is: it worked.

While making this trip back and forth to the office for three days, I marveled at the unspoken cooperation between everyone using the road. There was a constant call and response between everyone – an unspoken language in which drivers and pedestrians were in constant communication with one another. When another vehicle wanted to get in front of our car, or merge from another lane, they would lurch ahead an inch from our car, after which my driver would either say “yes” by slowing or stopping or “no” by quickly accelerating and cutting them off. All the while, I never saw a fender-bender or any evidence of road rage. I also saw no one driving while drinking coffee, doing their hair in the rearview mirror or looking at their mobile phone. Out of necessity, they were completely focused on the driving task.

After observing this marvelous spectacle for several days, I concluded that there was both a beauty and great wisdom in the native driving protocols. Despite the wildness and the seeming mortal danger, everyone was cooperating with one another to maximize the use of the road and promote traffic flow. It became clear to me that if, instead, these Indian drivers been constrained by rules we are accustomed to in the U.S. with enforced lane discipline, stop signs, traffic lights and general adherence to strict rules regarding the right of way, vehicle and pedestrian flow would be constipated to a crawl – if not halted altogether. They were maximizing the use of a limited resource via an ethos that was as aggressive as it was accommodating.

This experience caused me to reflect on what we seek to do as corporate counsel and compliance officers. We generally focus our efforts on building “lanes,” “stoplights,” “traffic signs” and other similar guidelines to control the “traffic” in our firms with the object of directing it away from danger. At the same time, to thrive, our businesses are compelled to drive to their “destination” as fast as possible in the midst of the chaos of the marketplace.

It seems to me that, in the interest of maximizing “traffic flow,” we might stop putting up signs on the “roadway” and take a different approach. Taking this approach might not only improve firm competitiveness, it may also be an acknowledgement of the reality that our employees’ behavior, and the business world in general, is likely much more akin to the traffic in Mumbai than we’d like to think. Much better to figure out a way to acknowledge the chaos and seek to enhance the “flow” while at the same time pointing out “potholes” and other hazards.

Too often, with the best of intentions, we strive to put so many controls on our firm’s business activities that we either constipate routine, lawful business activities or halt them all together. I think we do this, not because we’ve forgotten where our paychecks come from, but because it’s safe and it’s easy. It’s safe because we are conservative in the advice we give, so we can never be faulted for having given the “wrong” advice. It’s easy because it requires very little thinking about the difficult risk/reward/cost calculations that are a natural and necessary part of conducting business in the real world. It is also a bad business practice because it often induces our colleagues to go around or ignore the “road signs” we erect in order to get their jobs done. It also damages our credibility as sensible business partners.

So, instead of just trying to direct “traffic” with corporate policies and procedures, I think we can do a better job for our clients if we hop in the “passenger seat” with our business colleagues and not only experience for ourselves the chaos of the marketplace, but also help them arrive safely to their destination.


Previous Post

Download Compliance Whitepapers from CCI

Next Post

A Return to Common Sense

Jim Nortz

Jim NortzJim Nortz is a nationally recognized expert and thought leader in the field of business ethics and compliance, with over a decade of experience in the field of health care compliance, serving multinational pharmaceutical and medical device corporations.

Jim spent the first 17 years of his career as a litigator and corporate counsel before becoming Crompton Corporation’s first Vice President, Business Ethics and Compliance in 2003.

Since then, Jim has served as a compliance officer at Crompton and for five other multinational corporations, the most recent of which was Chief Compliance Officer at Carestream Health. Jim has extensive experience in implementing world-class compliance and ethics programs sufficiently robust to withstand U.S. Department of Justice scrutiny.

Jim is a frequent guest lecturer at the University of Rochester’s Simon School of Business, RIT’s Saunders School of Business, St. John Fisher College, Nazareth College and other law schools and universities around the country.

Jim writes the monthly business ethics columns for the Association of Corporate Counsel Docket magazine and the Rochester Business Journal

Jim is a member of the National Association of Corporate Directors and serves on Conscious Capitalism ROC’s Steering Committee. Previously, Jim served on the Board of Directors for the Ethics and Compliance Officers Association (“ECOA”) and the Board of the Rochester Area Business Ethics Foundation.

Jim is currently Founder and President of Axiom Compliance & Ethics Solutions LLC, a firm dedicated to driving ethical excellence by helping organizations implement effective compliance and ethics programs.

Related Posts

job candidates awaiting inerview

An Unconventional Interview Question: “Do You Have an HR Department?”

December 5, 2019
closeup of magnifying glass on gray background

DiCianni’s Idea: How It All Got Started

December 4, 2019
woman's hand touching beam of light on digital blue screen

The Evolution of Compliance

December 3, 2019
"fire drill" words beside flashing strobe

How M&A Benefits from Independent Assessment

November 20, 2019
Next Post
Book cover for a return to common sense

A Return to Common Sense

Free Downloads

OFAC whitepaper cover
Compliance Job Interview Q&A
Reputation Risk Management Research

RSS SEC Litigation News

  • Lester Burroughs December 5, 2019
    SEC Charges Connecticut Man with Defrauding Retail Investors
  • SBB Research Group LLC, et al. December 4, 2019
    SEC Charges Hedge Fund Adviser and Top Executives with Fraud
  • NIT Enterprises, Inc., et al. November 29, 2019
    SEC Halts Penny Stock Scheme Targeting Seniors

Jump to a Topic:

anti-corruption anti-money laundering/AML Artificial Intelligence/A.I. automation banks Big Data blockchain board of directors board risk oversight bribery CCPA/California Consumer Privacy Act Cloud Compliance communications management corporate culture corporate governance culture of ethics cyber risk data analytics data breach data governance decision-making Dodd-Frank DOJ due diligence fcpa enforcement actions GDPR GRC HIPAA information security internal audit internet of things (IoT) KYC/know your customer machine learning monitoring regtech reputation risk risk assessment Sanctions SEC social media risk technology third party risk management tone at the top training whistleblowing
No Result
View All Result

Privacy Policy

Follow Us

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • LinkedIn
  • RSS Feed

Category

  • Audit
  • Compliance
  • Compliance Podcasts
  • Cybersecurity
  • Data Privacy
  • eBooks
  • Ethics
  • FCPA
  • Featured
  • Financial Services
  • Fraud
  • Governance
  • HR Compliance
  • Leadership and Career
  • News
  • Opinion
  • Resource Library
  • Risk
  • Uncategorized
  • Videos
  • Webinars
  • Whitepapers

© 2019 Corporate Compliance Insights

No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • About
  • Articles
  • News
  • Podcasts
  • Videos
  • Whitepapers
  • eBooks
  • Events
  • Jobs
  • Subscribe

© 2019 Corporate Compliance Insights