Carnival of Trust

The Carnival of Trust is the brainchild of Charles Green of Trust Matters. It’s intended to highlight the best posts about trust in the business and professional workspace over the previous month. He apparently ran out of worthy people to host his carnival and, in what must have been a moment of weakness, asked me to host the Carnival of Trust for July.

Compliance and trust are an odd fit. After all, compliance can be seen as the opposite of trust. Compliance lays out policies and checks to make sure you are complying with those policies. Trust, but verify, and mostly verify.

I love carnivals. So before Mr. Green could change his mind I agreed to host the carnival. Still unsure about how compliance and trust worked together, I’m even more unsure how carnivals and trust go together. So I decided I would write about some of my favorite things at a carnival:

The Happy Clown

Clowns are a highlight of the carnival, with their faces painted in a bright red smile. The classic clown uses “clown white” to cover his entire face, hiding his underlying features. Then the clown adds a perpetual grin. Is there a problem with having a perpetual grin?

Steven DeMaio writes When Being Positive Is Positively Meaningless. Being super-positive can create so much “white noise that when clear, authentic positive feedback is given, it gets muted and loses its punch.” Being positive all the time can lower trust.

The Sad Clown

On the other side of the midway is the sad clown. Everyone can’t be happy all the time. As the character clown, the sad clown is likely the one who will end up getting a pie thrown at his face.

Scott Greenfield of Simple Justice takes on the Happysphere? You can’t get there from here. If you’re going to write a blog or expect to hear the truth from your peers, you need to expect to get some pie thrown in your face. Scott is happy to throw a pie at those sad clowns who cross the line in the legal blogosphere.

(Expecting a pie myself, I’m sure Charlie is starting wonder why he let me host this.)

The Clown Car

It seems that all of our financial institutions piled into a clown car and engaged in the same foolish activities with home mortgages. It’s fun to see clowns pile out of the impossibly small car. It’s less fun when you realize it’s taxpayer money helping the clown banks get out of their predicament.

Peter Birks writes about Trust and Naivety when it comes to looking at the health of our financial institutions. He writes about how Europe has decided to follow the U.S. lead in running financial institutions through stress tests. Running the tests was fairly successful in the U.S. for improving the public’s confidence in the banks. Birks points out why it’s not as successful in Europe. Different societies have different levels of trust in their government and their institutions.

Ball Toss

It’s pretty easy to throw a ball. It should be easy to win at the ball toss. The game’s barker has little to judge. If the ball goes in, you win. Baseball umpires have a harder job.

Charles Green talks about Baseball, Billy Budd and Business, using the blown call by baseball umpire Jim Joyce as the backdrop for his article. He presents three lessons to be learned:

Lesson 1. From umpire Joyce: face facts. Deal with reality. And the minute you see the facts are against you, call it. Call it on yourself. Take full responsibility.

Lesson 2. From pitcher Galarraga: accept life gracefully. Do all that you can; when you win, be gracious; and when you lose, that’s when you really demonstrate class.

Lesson 3: From Commissioner Selig. Celebrate the humanity of sports, business, life. The humanity of the sport really does transcend winning and losing.

Lion Tamer

The lure of the lion tamer is man against beast; realizing that you are not at the top of the food chain. The hungry lions are looking to eat the lion tamer when he steps into their cage. Health care costs are threatening to devour the American economy. Congress stepped into this cage of hungry lions when it passed the huge new health care law this spring.

Gregory Warner brings us an interesting story on Marketplace about a link between the way private oncologists get paid and how much chemotherapy they prescribe. No surprise. Doctors, like the rest of us, are influenced by how they get paid.

Fortune Teller

What awaits us after we leave the carnival’s midway? The lure of fortune tellers is the hope that their mystical powers will help us see the future and better deal with it.

One of a leader’s job skills is planning for the future and leading their people to best deal with it. Mike Myatt points out the importance of truth & leadership. “Telling the truth is not always easy, and may subject you to substantial opposition and controversy over the short run, but it will do nothing but help build your reputation, success and sustainability over the long haul.”

Elephant Ride

Elephants impress us with their massive size. Mr. Bailey’s biggest triumph as a circus entrepreneur was gaining possession of the first baby elephant born in captivity. This allowed his circus to compete with Barnum’s traveling circus.

Outside the carnival people are often unwilling to talk about the elephant in the room. If you want to be successful, you need to address the obvious problems. Jan Schultink shares a great insight (and image) in VC Pitch: Talk about the elephant in the room.

Demolition Derby

One of the loudest parts of the carnival is the demolition derby. I love seeing old cars smash into each other again and again until there is one fiercely-damaged car left still moving in the arena.

Tom Cox points out that Nice Teams Finish Last. Being nice will lead to workarounds and uncrossed bridges. On the other hand, you don’t want to be fierce, where you attack preemptively and build walls. He proposes a middle path where you are bold. That may not lead to victory in the demolition derby, but it may be a better way to lead a team.

Bumper Cars

The bumper cars offer people of all driving skills the ability to rampage through a pack of cars, with the inevitable collisions resulting in nothing more than a sudden jolt.

Over at Trust is Everything, Karen Mishra shares some trust lessons she learned as part of her teenage daughter getting ready to drive in Drivers’ Ed: A Whole New Meaning of Trust. I hope her daughter’s learning process is more like the bumper cars than the demolition derby.

Bearded Lady

Carnivals are full of odd people. For most carnivals, that includes the attendees, not just the sideshow performers. The bearded lady has been a staple of the side show for over a century. Although there were many famous bearded ladies, there were also many fakes.

When do Exaggerations and Misstatements Cross the Line? asks Knowledge@Wharton. “Embellishment is part of human nature, experts say, and almost everyone is guilty of it at one time or another. Left unchecked, however, exaggerations that seemed innocuous at first could result in serious, potentially career-ending consequences.”

Big Prizes

The lure of many games at the carnival is that big prize hanging on the wall behind the barker. Everyone wants the big prize. You’re bound to feel some envy when you see a winner carrying that huge stuffed animal around the midway. That envy may drive you to play again, hoping for a shot at the prize.

Jon Ingham looks at the problem of Promotion (and salary envy) in Social Advantage. The workplace is a social environment and workers will “behave dysfunctionally if they believe they’ve been treated unfairly in just a relatively minor way.”

Cotter Pins

Pay close attention to the cotter pins. Carnival rides fold down into truck-sized boxes for transportation to the next venue. Those cotter pins keep the ride re-assembled and keep you from flying off  into the crowd. A cotter pin is the glue that keeps the ride together.

Jack Vinson points to a story with the theory that trust is the glue that holds people together. “Trust is the most important currency in business. By opening up to what is true and creating a vision for the highest good, leaders can build a culture of trust and enhance the bottom line.”

Ring Toss

The ring toss game at the carnival is notoriously difficult. Failure is the usual result. If it were easy, they wouldn’t be giving prizes for winning.

John Scalzi in Whatever discusses the failure mode of clever. He points out that to be really clever you need to know when not to be clever. Before you write that clever bit, realize that the perception of the recipient will affect it. “Just because you intended to be clever doesn’t mean you will be perceived as clever.”

(I should have read that advice before I put this post together.)

You can read more about the Carnival of Trust and find links to past Carnivals of Trust at Charles H. Green’s Trust Matters. You can also use that site to submit an article for consideration in the next carnival.
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Corresponding with Cornelius – a new series of blog posts

200-state-street

Not all of my online conversations take place here at Compliance Building. I try to make as many comments in other places as I do here. Twitter is a sporadic stream of thoughts, comments, and replies. I also try to leave as many comments on other blogs as I do posts here. I think you should join some of those other conversations. Here are some other blog posts that caught my eye and made me leave some commentary.

Corresponding with Cornelius on Collaboration with Clients by David Hobbie at Caselines

A follow up to my earlier post on Extranets for law Firm and Client Collaboration

Why Corporate Ethics is Usually an Oxymoron by Charles Green of Trust Matters

Charlie does not like the idea of ethics being treated as separate process and an individual course. I agreed.

Live Events in the Age of Social Media by Bill Pollak of Incisive Media

Bill points out the ways Twitter and the social internet are changing the ways conferences are run and what happens after. I point out that they are also changing what happens before the conference.

How Are Lawyers using Twitter by Simon Chester on Slaw.ca

I share the ways I use Twitter.

Training: What Works? By Alexandra Wrage on the wrageblog

A great grouping of four types of workers in anti-bribery training. I note that the same paradigm can be applied to most compliance and ethics training.

Social Networks and Employer Branding by Brand for Talent

Mark and I are writing some guidelines on the use of social media for our readers. We invite you to join the conversation.Let us know how you think we can embrace these tools versus police them. I offered up my draft blogging / social internet policy.

The Three Types of Collaboration by Jordan Furlong of Law 21

Jordan sets out a paradigm of three types of collaboration: Lawyer-to-lawyer, lawyer-to-client, and client-to-client. It is one of the few times I have disagreed with Jordan.

I have to credit David Hobbie with coming up with the phrase “Corresponding with Cornelius” which led to this blog post title and this new series of blog posts. (At least new for me.)

Lawyer’s Noisy Withdrawal from Stanford Case

sjoblomLawyers must protect their clients’ confidence, but they can’t aid in the commission of a potential crime. The Wall Street Journal covered some of the facts leading up to the “noisy withdrawal” of Thomas Sjoblom of Proskauer Rose LLP from their representation of the Stanford Financial Group: Top Lawyer’s Withdrawal From Stanford Case Waves a Flag.

There was much consternation over the idea of an attorney whistle-blowing on her client back when Sarbanes-Oxley was adopted. Legal ethics, business ethics and ethics were at odds. An attorney is divided between doing what is right for society at large, for her client and her own income.

Lawyers represent guilty people. They are there to help them through the legal system and ensure the government did not overstep its constitutional limitations. Stanford was in trouble and needed the help of lawyers. In this time of crisis Stanford’s lawyer ended his representation.

Charlie Green finds much fault with the approach and found the use of “disaffirm” to be a bit trivial for the magnitude of the underlying scandal.  Stephen Gillers in his comment points out that “the word ‘disaffirm’ is actually a term of art in New York legal ethics.”

I am giving Mr. Sjoblom the benefit of the doubt that he did not find out about the fraud at Stanford until sometime in late January or early February when they had to respond to the SEC subpoena. It certainly sounds like the February 10 testimony of Laura Pendergest-Holt, a Stanford executive, in front SEC investigators did not go well. She got arrested and Mr. Sjoblom made his noisy withdrawal.

There is a lot of work ahead for Stanford’s lawyers in sorting out the facts, defending the company and defending the executives. Sjoblom stepped away from this representation and turned down hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars or revenue to be made from the representation.

There is a big difference between defending a criminal and being a witness to a crime. It sounds like Mr. Sjoblom realized that he had become a witness to a crime and incapable of defense.

Someday we may hear the true story of what happened. As with the Madoff scandal, I am very interested in finding out the underlying facts. Did they start out bad? If they originally had good intentions, what made these people go bad?

See also:

The Law:

17 CFR 205.3(b) provides:

Duty to report evidence of a material violation. (1) If an attorney, appearing and practicing before the [Securites and Exchange] Commission in the representation of an issuer, becomes aware of evidence of a material violation by the issuer or by any officer, director, employee, or agent of the issuer, the attorney shall report such evidence to the issuer’s chief legal officer (or the equivalent thereof) or to both the issuer’s chief legal officer and its chief executive officer (or the equivalents thereof) forthwith. By communicating such information to the issuer’s officers or directors, an attorney does not reveal client confidences or secrets or privileged or otherwise protected information related to the attorney’s representation of an issuer.

This regulation was promulgated under Section 307 of Sarbanes Oxley Act of 2002.