From Wrong to Right

Post By: Adam Turteltaub

On April 15, 1947 Jackie Robinson took the field for the Brooklyn Dodgers, and the desegregation of baseball began.

It’s a moment worth remembering, but it’s also worth noting that not every team immediately followed the Dodgers lead. In fact, it took until July 21, 1959, more than 12 years later, for the Red Sox, the last segregated team in baseball, to field a black player.

That’s why it’s all the more remarkable that on January 4, 2021 the Red Sox hired Bianca Smith to be a minor league coach. The team that was last to desegregate became the first to hire a black woman as a coach.

It’s a good demonstration of how organizations can change dramatically over time. It’s also a good reminder of why we must be prepared to learn from those whose past may not have been the most perfect.

At the SCCE & HCCA over the years we have had a number of speakers from organizations that had been at the center of a great scandal. We have also had several white collar felons speak.

Some in the audience have been troubled by this practice, asking why would we want to hear from people and organizations who clearly had done wrong.

The answer is because they are often the ones who have learned the most. They know precisely what can and does go wrong, and the intelligent and humble ones learn from the process and come out stronger for it. Siemens was the poster child for corruption and went on to develop an anti-corruption program that other firms benchmark against. Volkswagen has proven to be a model for cultural transformation. Rashmi Airan, Richard Bistrong and the late Patrick Kuhse all shared their tales of ending up on the wrong side of the law, providing insights into how good employees go bad.

These individuals and organizations also provide lessons in humility. They all were highly successful.  All had good names and eventually realized that’s not enough. Nice suits and shiny offices don’t prove virtue. Acts do. And, seemingly small decisions can have very negative consequences.

As we seek to further the compliance profession it’s important for us to listen to these voices, hear their tales, and not ask “how could they have done it” but instead “what’s the risk of us (or me) doing the same.”  And we must learn from their lessons, so that we, too, can go from last to first.