By Samantha Kelen Greves
So here we are, back at it again. It’s hard to believe we are here at the CEI again, but there are few places I would rather be. Well, professionally at least, I’d definitely rather be at the beach, but that’s another story. So I wanted to share with you my biggest take away from yesterday.
I attended the afternoon session presented by Marjorie Doyle and Kris Puglsey titled “Leadership Skills to Advance Your Compliance Program.” The session covered some of the softer skills needed to be effective in our organizations, including best practices for communicating with employees and ways to build relationships with key business partners. Kris Pugsley did an excellent job providing examples from the ON Semiconductor program, demonstrating a truly robust program in practice. But the one suggestion that really caught my attention was from Marjorie Doyle, when she encouraged us to reach out to compliance personnel at the current or former companies of our independent board members. She suggested we use these conversations to identify who is most familiar with a best practice program, and therefore, who could potentially become our champion on the board. This individual could ask probing questions and say things like “Well, we used to do x. Why don’t we do that here?” Or better yet, “Our compliance program had a much larger budget. How is your staff able to be effective with such limited resources?”
Perhaps with this kind of support, the challenges we face with management could be overcome with some reinforcement from the top.