At Home

This is the third time I am attending the SCCE’s European Compliance & Ethics Institute and I am feeling like when I get back home after a business trip and see my family. Whatever “family” means…

Don’t get me wrong.This feeling has nothing to do with the fact that I may like having a drink and relaxing a bit chatting about life, or that I see other “veterans” and say “Hi, how was the year…?”.

It has much more to do with the fact that when you get back home, you don’t need to explain many things to be understood.

At home you feel safe, and the very same comfort that your family gets from yourself when they start telling you the horrible week they had, is the same that you receive if you dare to complaint about yours.

That’s the feeling I’ve got.

After one year “fighting” with clients, directors, executives and managers of the companies you are counselling, trying to be understood, telling them what “effective compliance” means, trying to convey a clear message on what is supposed to be an ethical corporate culture, why they should do more training, or less policy writing…you finally sit at the SCCE Institute and realise that you’re not alone, yet misunderstood.

You are not alone. You don’t even need to express your professional concerns to others because, long ago, they have read your lips.

That’s the feeling that I had today when discussion popped up at Jane and Kristy’s “show”: I was not alone. I was with a family that have had, do have and will always have the very same problems that I’m facing every day.

Communication and training. These are the two magic words I repeat and repeat once and again to my corporate clients. These are the words that are, by far, most quoted at every session of SCCE Institutes.

I just realised today that what we do here is precisely communicating and training. True, not with the “outside world” for a couple of days, but the immense benefit that we all receive is communicating with your compliance colleagues, sharing your concerns with them and getting back comfort. Like at home… Isn’t it?

Believe it or not, the same lessons I’m learning from peers and colleagues at the SCCE Institute, are the lessons I’m stubbornly attempting to bring to my clients.

“There is not crying in baseball” (nor in compliance) said Kristy Grant-Hart and Jane Mitchell…I shall not cry then. But I am beginning to think that without these periodical yearly “compliance injections” I would have already gave up!!!

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