I was privileged to attend a very inspirational talk from Pater Baines yesterday. He talked about leadership, an area he is well qualified to speak about.
The first point he made was that “Hope isn’t a Plan”. This applies if you find yourself in the middle of managing an emergency, or just in the everyday routine running of your business. You need to have plans in place to deal with the mundane as well as the out of the ordinary events.
Planning to avoid penalties and achieve goals
Compliance with rules and regulations and achieving goals beyond compliance requires planning.
You can’t hope that everyone will always do the right thing.
You can’t hope that your employees will know what to do.
You can’t hope that they won’t take a shortcut when rushed, tired, desperate to get home.
You can’t hope that the mistake, when it didn’t get anyone into trouble won’t become a habit amongst your employees.
You can’t hope that it will always be OK.
And you can’t hope that the regulator won’t find out and penalise your company.
As much as we hate red tape, regulations, rules, standards are there for a reason; whether it be the safety of employees or consumers, protection of competition or small market players, security of water, energy or food supplies, the wellbeing of people or protection of the environment.
To avoid finding yourself and your organisation in trouble for breaching one or more regulations or standards, it is best not to just hope, but to develop a plan and execute it.
Sensitivity and Clarity
Peter talked about the ability of good leaders to act with sensitivity and the importance of having clarity in what we are doing and why we are doing it.
A plan is only as good as the degree that it is accepted and followed throughout the organisation. We all know that not everyone likes change and that when adopting new processes there is likely to be resistance. This is where the leaders of the organisation need to be sensitive to their employees and understand why they are reluctant to change. By addressing and overcoming their fears and concerns before rolling out the plan, and preferably listening to them in the development phase, there will be better uptake of the new processes.
Clarity around what you are doing and why is important. The goals need to align with the values of the organisation. Clarity of the outcome sought helps you to set the scope of your compliance program, goals and processes to achieve them. When put in terms of the organisation’s values, everyone can relate and its easier to stand by the change when challenged. For example a company that values its clients and the quality of its goods will not have difficulty implementing a program that aims to ensure that consumers are not inadvertently misled by advertising or misrepresentations about their goods or standing by their warranty. A company that values families should be able to implement plans to reduce the impact of its operations on the wellbeing of future generations.
To manage risk, invest in making a clear, well considered and communicated plan. Leave hope for “hoping it won’t rain on the weekend”.