Popcorn and Compliance

In this podcast series, recovering screenwriter (and Mr. Monitor) Jay Rosen and myself will indulge in passion for the movies by looking at them through the lens of compliance. Jay is a contemporary movie fan and I am more of a classic movie maven so we present a well-rounded view of the movie fandom. If you want to indulge in your love for the movies with two guys who are passionate about Hollywood and get some ideas for your compliance program, this is the podcast series for you.For this week’s offering, today we look at the Marvel-universe hero, Captain Marvel. 

Some of the highlights include:

What is the backstory for Nick Fury and Phil Coulson?How and why did internet trolls tried to sabotage the film?What was the response of Rotten Tomatoes?How were Eggs used to great effect?The special effects and battle scenes were great.Who was honored in different scenes in the movie?Jay gives the movie not only a full bucket of popcorn but as second bucket as well. Tom joins with an overflow bucket of popcorn.The Compliance takeaways:Understand where you come from, know your business inside and out.Nick Fury recognized a new risk-do you have a trip system for new risks in your organization? Do you have a seat at that table?How and why did Nick Fury lose his eye? How do you assess known strategies for unknown risks?Get out of the corporate office and into the field to meet your employees.Take action, when needed to change the balance.As a CCO you may have to take a stand.

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In this podcast series, recovering screenwriter (and Mr. Monitor) Jay Rosen and myself will indulge in passion for the movies by looking at them through the lens of compliance. Jay is a contemporary movie fan and I am more of a classic movie maven so we present a well-rounded view of the movie fandom. So if you want to indulge in your love for the movies with two guys who are passionate about Hollywood and get some ideas for your compliance program, this is the podcast series for you. Today, we are joined by a special guest commentator, Lisa Fine, co-founder of the podcast Great Women in Compliance. For this week’s offering, today we look at the DC-universe hero,Aquaman. Some of the highlights include:  Ø  Hero take a journey is great troupe.Ø Aquaman’s star Jason Momoa appears to be in on the joke and has a ton of fun.Ø Nicole Kidman plays an usual role in this film.Ø Does the cinematography work in the numerous underwater shots? Ø The special effects and battle scenes were great. Ø Tom and Lisa give the move a ¾ bucket of popcorn as they both felt the script could have been more faithful to the original origin story. Ø  Jay gives the movie not only a full bucket of popcorn but an overflow basket as well. The Compliance takeaways: 

1.    When you are on the compliance journey always remember from whence you came. Use the best of both worlds when melding culture. 2.    Use the best of both worlds when melding corporate culture. 3.    Tone at the Top-the kingdom of Atlantis is not well run and it starts from the top.4.    Use social media to communicate your compliance program-the financial success of the movie has been attributed in part to the studio’s use of social media in its marketing campaign. 5.    Get out of the office-another contributing factor to the success of the marketing campaign was the worldwide tour by the cast. 6.    High risk does not mean no, it means high risk management-Director James Wu wanted crisp underwater scenes particularly involving hair movement. Industrial Light and Magic had to invent an entire new process for making the hair movement more realistic. 

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In this new podcast series, recovering screenwriter (and Mr. Monitor) Jay Rosen and myself will indulge in passion for the movies by looking at them through the lens of compliance. Jay is a contemporary movie fan and I am more of a classic movie maven so we present a well-rounded view of the movie fandom. So if you want to indulge in your love for the movies with two guys who are passionate about Hollywood and get some ideas for your compliance program, this is the podcast series for you. Today we look at the classic favorite, Mary Poppins Returns. Some of the highlights include:  Ø  Can you successfully remake a beloved classic?Ø How do eggs come into play in Hollywood and beyond?Ø Where is Dick Van Dyke when you need him?Ø Does the cinematography still work some 50 years after the original? Ø Why you need to watch the original Mary Poppins before seeing Mary Poppins Returns. Ø  Jay feels that while Mary Poppins Returns had the support and investment of the Walt Disney Company and it faithfully tried to recreate the original, the artistic returns fall short of the sum of its parts. The Compliance takeaways:1.    Document Document Document-the parable from the share certificates to save the house on Cherry Tree Lane.2.    Change in corporate culture needed-Mr. Dawes Jr. (Dick Van Dyke) fired Bank President William Wilkins.3.    Tone at the Top-As bank President, William Wilkins had taken the bank far afield from its mission and core values.4.    If you lack the passion, you may fail.  5.    You cannot simply follow the road map, but you must design your compliance program to be fresh, as you are taking this journey for the first time.  Not that you must re-invent the wheel, but you need to keep your colleagues and employees engaged on their journey.

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In this new podcast series, recovering screenwriter (and Mr. Monitor) Jay Rosen and myself will indulge in passion for the movies by looking at them through the lens of compliance. Jay is a contemporary movie fan and I am more of a classic movie maven so we present a well-rounded view of the movie fandom. So if you want to indulge in your love for the movies with two guys who are passionate about Hollywood and get some ideas for your compliance program, this is the podcast series for you. For the holiday season, today we look at the classic favorite, Elf. 

Some of the highlights include:Is this movie a story of hero who takes a journey or stranger who comes to town? Or both?A man child uses simple lovable logic to teach lessons to those overwhelmed by their lives or current position.Once Buddy allows his Dad Walter (James Caan), his love interest (Zooey Deschanel) and his little brother to see the world though his childlike eyes, they can find their way forward in the world.How does the director’s Filmography inform this picture?Jay explains how the story structure worked in this movie.The Compliance takeaways:Things are not always as they seem (just like Buddy). The fact that there are no calls on your helpline may be a sign that everything is ok, but maybe no calls means that your organization lacks a speak up culture.It takes time to learn about your environment and discover how to act accordingly.This argues for CCOs and compliance practitioners to get out of your corner office and onto the floor or out into the field to meet with and interact with your employees.Buddy came from a foreign culture, but he continued to act like he was back in the North Pole. Even though he was warned not to pick up hidden candy on the streets of NY, he still did.  In time, Buddy did learn the rules of the city and by using his sweet nature, he combined what he knew to get results in the Big (Bad)Apple.

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In this new podcast series, recovering screenwriter (and Mr. Monitor) Jay Rosen and I will indulge in passion for the movies by looking at them through the lens of compliance. Jay is a contemporary movie fan and I am more of a classic movie maven so we present a well-rounded view of the movie fandom. To jump start the series, Jay and I revisited the intersection of Star Wars and compliance in five episodes this week. Today for our first full episode, we look at the recently released music bio-pic Bohemian Rhapsody. So if you want to indulge in your love for the movies with two guys who are passionate about Hollywood and get some ideas for your compliance program, this is the podcast series for you. Some of the highlights include:  Ø  How the movie came together after years in development and how it could have been a much different picture. Ø The stars were spot on in their portrayals of the band members (living and dead).Ø How do you wrap a story of redemption around a character you know will die of a terminal illness?Ø Tom indulges in his love of tracking shots. Ø  Jay explains how the story structure worked in this movie.  The Compliance takeaways: 1.     A compliance program must continually innovate. 2.    You must bake continuous improvement into your compliance program.3.    Every compliance professional should be ready for the opportunity; whether it be to move up in your profession or sell a new compliance initiative. 4.    The creative process in music can inform your innovation in compliance—engage your audience. 5.    Use the design thinking model, listen to what your audience wants from compliance. 6.     Learn from your mistakes and move forward incorporating the lessons learned into the next iteration. 

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We conclude our 5-part series on the intersection of Star Wars and compliance by looking at the only stand-alone entry in the Star War series, Rogue One. This movie tells the tale of the spies who stole the schematics from the original Death Star and transmitted it to Princess Leia and thereby the Rebel Alliance. Rogue Oneis the first film in the Star Wars Anthology series, a series of stand-alone spin-off films in the Star Wars franchise. It is not clear where the name of the movie came from; although my personal nomination is that in the attack led by Luke on the original Death Star, his squadron was Rogue Two so the movie title is a tribute to those Rebel Alliance X-wing fighters and their pilots. 

As long as 24 years ago, Lynn S. Paine wrote about the myth of the rogue employee in the Harvard Business Review (HBR), in an article entitled “Managing for Organizational Integrity”. In this article she wrote, “executives are quick to describe any wrongdoing as an isolated incident, the work of a rogue employee. The thought that the company could bear any responsibility for an individual’s misdeeds never enters their minds. Ethics, after all, has nothing to do with management. In fact, ethics has everything to do with management.” How prescient she was in her article. For it is management who sets the tone throughout the organization, whether that is something along the lines of a wink and a nod towards ethics and compliance or the more ubiquitous miss your numbers for two quarters and you will be history, Paine noted, “More typically, unethical business practice involves the tacit, if not explicit, cooperation of others and reflects the values, attitudes, beliefs, language, and behavioral patterns that define an organization’s operating culture. Ethics, then, is as much an organizational as a personal issue.” However, a company’s responsibility is more than simply to set the right tone then sit back and do nothing. The drafters of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act recognized this when they included the requirement for internal controls to be included in the law. For, as Paine said, “Managers who fail to provide proper leadership and to institute systems that facilitate ethical conduct share responsibility with those who conceive, execute, and knowingly benefit from corporate misdeeds.”

The three basic tenets of a best practices compliance program are to prevent, detect and remedy. By claiming employees who engage in bribery and corruption have ‘gone rogue’; companies are attempting to divest themselves of responsibility for actions from which they benefit, particularly if the bribery and corruption generated business sales and revenue.  We hope you have enjoyed our five-part podcast series on the intersection of Star Wars and compliance as much as we enjoyed producing it. Always remember the storytelling component of compliance. Reciting rules, regulations, policies and procedures is the way to engage effectively in compliance. 

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Today Jay and I consider the first ‘new’Star Wars movie entry, Episode VII –The Force Awakens. I say it is a new Star Wars movie as it was the first one not created by LucasFilms, as George Lucas had sold his company to Disney, which produced the 2016 entry into the Star Wars oeuvre. It was directed by JJ Abrams and told the story of the Star Wars universe some 30 years after the destruction of the last Death Star.  It is this disruptive nature of the Star Wars franchise that I will focus on today as it relates to disruption innovation in compliance. 

The film introduced several new characters: Rey, Finn and Poe Dameron, Kylo Ren and the First Order, a successor to the Galactic Empire. The film was largely one giant search for Luke Skywalker who had gone into isolation after his failure to re-establish the Jedi order. In addition to introducing the new characters, we are reunited with Han, Chewbacca and Princess Leia, who is now General Leia Organa. The First Order has developed new weapon, Starkiller, a deliciously worthy successor to the Death Star; the Rebel Alliance majorly disrupts the weapon and the First Order by destroying it, in the film’s climactic battle.  

One of the key things the Department of Justice (DOJ) has communicated over the past few months is the importance of doing compliance rather than having a paper compliance program in place. In releasing the new Foreign Corrupt Practices Act Corporate Enforcement Policy, the DOJ emphasized the clear delineation of factors they will consider in determining if a company has an operationalized best practices compliance program in place in the context of a FCPA enforcement action. All of this has required disruptive innovation in compliance beyond the simple paper compliance program which until recently was seen as the norm.

This leads to three key elements of disruption theory, which fit the compliance context. The first is that compliance is a process. The second key point is that Compliance 3.0 is very different from compliance programs of the past decade. The third point is that not all disruptive innovations succeed. As many compliance practitioners are lawyers, we are naturally reticent to embrace such change, however I think the pronouncements of the DOJ throughout the year have made even clearer the need for continued evolution of anti-corruption compliance going forward.

In The Force Awakens, there were numerous disruptions. We saw the death of one of the most beloved characters in the series, Han Solo, the growing awareness by Rey of her powers and the return of Luke Skywalker. It totally disrupted the First Order and destroyed its most lethal weapon. You can draw on this inspiration for your compliance regime.

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Today we continue our celebration and exploration of the original trilogy of Star Wars movies with a look at Episode VI. Return of the Jedi. In this final movie from the original three, the good guys win in the end after overcoming incredible odds. Many fans and critics panned it for including the incredibly cute and furry Ewoks on the moon named Endor as a part of the storyline. Many thought one very tall Wookie was enough cuteness for the series. Yet the Ewoks did provide the setup to one of the movies best lines. The Ewoks thought one of Luke’s robots, C-3PO, was a god. Solo asked him to demonstrate some ‘god-like’ powers to which C- 3PO replied, “It is against my programming to impersonate a deity.”

This movie’s big reveal was that Luke and Princess Leia were twins and that she was now free to unabashedly pursue bad boy Han Solo. While Episode VI was the lowest grossing film of the original three, coming in at only $572MM worldwide, it was still a great ride and visually stunning. George Lucas’ in-house organ, Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), certainly earned their title for their special effects in the movie. The Sarlacc battle sequence was great, the speeder bike chase on the Endor moon was way cool and the space battle between Rebel and Imperial pilots was a great ride. At the Academy Awards ceremony for movies of that year, Richard Edlund, Dennis Muren, Ken Ralston, and Phil Tippett, all from ILM, received the Special Achievement Award for Visual Effects Oscar award.

I thought about this entry in the Star Wars oeuvre in the context of compliance training. One of the key changes from the Department of Justice articled in the 2017 Evaluation of Corporate Compliance Programs was the change in training. The DOJ wants both targeted and effective training. This means you must be able to demonstrate how your training has been received and utilized by your employee base.

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Second in our 5-part series on compliance through the lens of Star Wars is Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back, which is my personal favorite of the original three movies. The film begins with a cool battle on the ice planet of Hoth and has some great HR lessons as Darth Vader executes officers for work place failures; demonstrates some dangers involving ineffective training for Luke Skywalker on the tropical plant of Dagobah, where he travels to learn under the Jedi master Yoda who utters the immortal line “Try not! Do, or do not. There is no try”; and ends in Cloud City, a floating gas mining colony in the skies of the planet Bespin run by Han Solo’s old buddy, Lando Calrissian. It also has one of the greatest movie lines of all-time, thundered by Darth Vader to Luke Skywalker, near the end of the film. Today, we consider it for the continued issue of due diligence.

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Today I begin a new podcast series with recovering screenwriter, Jay Rosen. The Podcast series is entitled Popcorn and Compliance-at the Movies with Tom and Jay. In this new offering from the Compliance Podcast Network, Jay and I will consider compliance, business, leadership and life lessons from the movies. We will look at both contemporary and classic movies. We will begin with one of our favorite series, Star Wars. 

We begin with Episode IV – A New Hope. One of the plotlines is that the Galactic Empire has created a Death Star with enough firepower to destroy a planet. The Rebel Alliance is determined to destroy the Death Star and has blueprints detailing the defensive posture of the Death Star. A computer analysis determines a weakness in the Death Star’s defensive shield. At one point, the Death Star’s commander, Grand Moff Tarkin, played by Peter Cushing, is told there is a ‘risk’ in the Rebel’s plan of attack. Tarkin dismisses this risk as insignificant. Of course, Luke Skywalker then proceeds to exploit this risk and destroy the Death Star.

Tarkin’s incorrect assessment of this risk was lethal. It informs how you evaluate compliance risk under the FCPA or an economic sanctions regime. Failure to appreciate risk can lead to some very serious and perhaps lethal consequences.

Whether you utilize one approach or another, analyzing the results of your risk assessment is as important as doing the risk assessment. With the recent Department of Justice (DOJ) remarks around how they will review the effectiveness of compliance programs during an enforcement action to determine potential credit or even granting a declination, the stakes have never been higher. Of course, for Grand Moff Tarkin, his refusal to analyze the risk assessment presented to him was fatal.

What does the geographic area you conduct business in mean for your company’s risk? This is beyond the Transparency International-Corruption Perceptions Index (TI-CPI) for payments to corrupt local officials, although that could certainly come into play. What if you have to make payments to criminals to secure your supply chain and the safe movement of your employees. What is the liability for a company which puts its employees in such a high-risk environment?

If you do not ask those questions and then pay attention to the answers, you may find yourself in the same position as Grand Moff Tarkin.

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