Latest / Chief in Tech Deep Dive Shortcast / Chief in Tech S1E55 - Jacqueline Ryan : Culture by Design – How Leadership, Ethics and Technology Shape the Future of Work

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Chief in Tech S1E55 - Jacqueline Ryan : Culture by Design – How Leadership, Ethics and Technology Shape the Future of Work · Chief in Tech Deep Dive Shortcast

• 0:00
  Welcome to today's deep dive. We are so glad
• 0:02
  you were joining us. Yeah. Thanks for being here
• 0:04
  So to kick things off. I want you to imagine
• 0:08
  a company right and they are spending like $50
• 0:13
  million on this state -of -the -art fully integrated
• 0:16
  AI workflow. Oh, totally sparing no expense.
• 0:20
  Right. They're automating everything, squeezing
• 0:22
  every last drop of efficiency out of their supply
• 0:25
  chain, rolling out all these predictive models
• 0:28
  to just completely outsmart their competitors.
• 0:31
  Basically sprinting toward the future. Exactly.
• 0:33
  But then a mid -level manager who's just, you
• 0:35
  know, trying to hit a quarterly sales target,
• 0:38
  they go in and manipulate a few data points in
• 0:41
  that exact same system. And it all comes crashing
• 0:43
  down. Yeah. The company gets hit with this massive
• 0:45
  regulatory fine. They lose their biggest government
• 0:48
  contract. All that 50 million dollar technology
• 0:51
  just couldn't stop one single human being with
• 0:54
  a bad incentive, which is. Such a common story,
• 0:57
  unfortunately. It really is. OK, let's unpack
• 1:00
  this because we see this contradiction everywhere
• 1:02
  in the business world right now. Organizations
• 1:05
  are actively funding all this shiny new tech,
• 1:07
  but they treat the ethical frameworks required
• 1:10
  to manage it like, I don't know, a black hole
• 1:13
  for capital. Right. They see it as just burning
• 1:15
  money. And it really represents a fundamental
• 1:17
  misunderstanding of risk. Today's source material
• 1:20
  is an in -depth analysis looking at exactly this
• 1:23
  intersection, you know, where technology, corporate
• 1:26
  culture, and ethics all collide. And for you
• 1:30
  listening, whether you are managing a small team,
• 1:33
  navigating your first corporate job, or hey,
• 1:35
  maybe you're sitting on a board of directors,
• 1:38
  the core thesis here is critical. Companies view
• 1:41
  ethics as a non -revenue generating sector. Yeah,
• 1:44
  doesn't make a line go up. Exactly. So because
• 1:46
  of that, they try to shortcut it. They try to
• 1:48
  fix it with policies. But the reality, which
• 1:51
  this analysis absolutely proves, is that the
• 1:54
  true measure of a company's ethical stance is
• 1:57
  never found in some massive policy document sitting
• 1:59
  on a server. Right. It is entirely dictated by
• 2:02
  the daily behaviors of its people. I mean, the
• 2:05
  financial resistance makes sense on a... purely
• 2:08
  mathematical level, right? Even if it's super
• 2:10
  flawed in the long term. If you are sitting on
• 2:12
  a board and someone pitches a new sales software,
• 2:15
  they can project what, like a 10 % bump in revenue?
• 2:18
  Yeah, the return on investment is tangible. You
• 2:20
  can see it. Exactly. But if someone asks for
• 2:23
  that same budget to build a robust ethical compliance
• 2:26
  program, the best case scenario is that literally
• 2:29
  nothing happens. Right, you're paying for silence.
• 2:31
  You're asking a board to spend millions of dollars
• 2:34
  to prove a negative. So instead of funding real
• 2:37
  ethical infrastructure, companies just take the
• 2:40
  cheap route. They draft a hundred page acceptable
• 2:42
  use policy. They make every employee click an
• 2:45
  I agree checkbox once a year and they just call
• 2:48
  it a day. They consider the organization protected.
• 2:51
  Which is wild because they are mistaking a boundary
• 2:54
  for a culture. Oh, I like how you put that. What's
• 2:56
  fascinating here is that a policy just defines
• 2:59
  the absolute edge of what is legal or permissible.
• 3:01
  It's just a line on a piece of paper. But a culture
• 3:05
  is the atmosphere that dictates what happens
• 3:08
  everywhere inside those boundaries. Right. It's
• 3:11
  like having this state of the art home security
• 3:13
  system, but you leave the front door wide open
• 3:16
  because everyone is just too busy rushing inside
• 3:18
  to make money. The policy is useless if the daily
• 3:21
  habit doesn't support it. That is a perfect analogy.
• 3:25
  And in an era where technology is advancing exponentially,
• 3:28
  relying purely on static policies is incredibly
• 3:31
  dangerous. Tech moves infinitely faster than
• 3:34
  corporate rule books can be written. Oh, for
• 3:36
  sure. By the time they are debated, approved
• 3:38
  by legal and distributed, the tech has already
• 3:41
  moved on. Take generative AI as the perfect example
• 3:44
  of this. If an organization gives its marketing
• 3:47
  team a brand new AI tool today, the legal department
• 3:50
  might take, I don't know, six months to draft
• 3:53
  a comprehensive policy on how to use it ethically.
• 3:55
  They're worrying about copyright, data privacy,
• 3:58
  bias, all that stuff. Meanwhile, the marketing
• 4:00
  team is generating campaigns with it tomorrow
• 4:02
  morning. Exactly. And in that six month gap,
• 4:04
  what dictates the marketing team's behavior?
• 4:07
  It's only the culture. Just the unwritten rules.
• 4:10
  Right, the unwritten understanding of how things
• 4:12
  are actually done. If the underlying culture
• 4:15
  of that team is win it all costs and crush the
• 4:18
  quarterly metrics, they will use that AI tool
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  to scrape proprietary data or generate misleading
• 4:25
  copy without a second thought. The policy doesn't
• 4:28
  exist yet, so the culture takes the wheel. It
• 4:30
  totally reminds me of a Formula One racing team.
• 4:32
  Oh, yeah? Yeah, like... You can spend $20 million
• 4:36
  engineering the most sophisticated, technologically
• 4:39
  advanced car on the track, right? You have all
• 4:41
  this telemetry software monitoring every single
• 4:44
  variable. And the team's official policy manual
• 4:47
  states very clearly that safety is the number
• 4:49
  one priority. Right. Safety first. Always. Always.
• 4:52
  But if you pay the pit crew minimum wage and
• 4:55
  explicitly tell them they will be fired if a
• 4:57
  tire change takes longer than two seconds. The
• 5:00
  culture completely overlays the policy. Completely.
• 5:02
  The crew will cut corn. They won't secure the
• 5:05
  lug nuts properly. The wheels are going to literally
• 5:07
  fall off the car, regardless of how good the
• 5:09
  telemetry software is, because the daily habit
• 5:11
  driven by the incentives just completely contradicts
• 5:14
  the written safety policy. That captures the
• 5:17
  mechanics of the failure perfectly. The incentives
• 5:20
  dictate the behavior, which renders the rule
• 5:23
  book totally moot. And our source material actually
• 5:26
  provides a highly detailed case study of a massive
• 5:29
  organization that learned this through catastrophic
• 5:32
  failure. Oh, the FTSE 100 company. Exactly. We
• 5:36
  are looking at a massive, globally resourced
• 5:38
  organization with incredibly deep pockets. They
• 5:42
  had state -of -the -art compliance technology.
• 5:44
  They had the required policies. They had all
• 5:46
  the check boxes ticked. Every single one. Yet
• 5:49
  they found themselves completely embroiled in
• 5:51
  a large -scale fraud scandal. And I want to look
• 5:54
  closely at the mechanics of that failure because
• 5:56
  it wasn't just a rogue employee making a simple
• 5:59
  accounting error, right? The technology didn't
• 6:01
  fail. The software logged everything accurately.
• 6:04
  The policies strictly forbade the fraudulent
• 6:06
  behavior. But the fraud happened anyway because
• 6:09
  human beings were actively working around the
• 6:11
  systems to meet these aggressive financial targets.
• 6:14
  And the fallout was just devastating. They lost
• 6:17
  millions in direct regulatory fines. But the
• 6:20
  secondary damage was much worse. The immediate
• 6:22
  suspension of highly lucrative government contracts.
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  That is the moment the theoretical risk becomes
• 6:29
  a catastrophic financial reality. And that crisis
• 6:33
  forced a massive organizational reckoning. they
• 6:36
  realized they could not audit their way out of
• 6:38
  a cultural problem. Yeah, you can't just spreadsheet
• 6:40
  your way out of it. No, they had to fundamentally
• 6:43
  change the daily behavior of their workforce.
• 6:46
  So the restructuring started at the absolute
• 6:48
  top of the hierarchy. They created this role,
• 6:51
  the head of business integrity. But crucially,
• 6:54
  they didn't bury this position in the HR department
• 6:56
  or middle management. This role was given a direct
• 6:59
  reporting line to the board of directors. I have
• 7:02
  to challenge the effectiveness of that though.
• 7:03
  I mean, by creating a specific head of business
• 7:06
  integrity and giving them a fancy title, doesn't
• 7:09
  an organization risk siloing the problem? Well,
• 7:12
  it feels like it gives every other executive
• 7:14
  an excuse to say, oh, ethics isn't my department.
• 7:16
  It's the business integrity team's job. You just
• 7:19
  concentrate the responsibility into one office
• 7:21
  rather than spreading it across the culture.
• 7:23
  That is the exact trap most companies fall into.
• 7:26
  when they appoint an ethics officer. It's a really
• 7:29
  valid point. Right. But the organization in our
• 7:31
  source material recognized that risk, which is
• 7:34
  why the head of business integrity wasn't tasked
• 7:36
  with just writing more rules. They were actually
• 7:39
  tasked with integrating ethical checks into existing
• 7:42
  operational systems. OK, so they baked it into
• 7:44
  the day to day. Exactly. For example, they completely
• 7:48
  overhauled how the company communicated with
• 7:50
  its employees about compensation. They started
• 7:53
  printing the company's core ethical values directly
• 7:56
  on employee payslips. OK, see, when I read that
• 7:59
  specific detail in the source, I rolled my eyes
• 8:02
  so hard. You didn't buy it. No. Adding a slogan
• 8:05
  to a payslip feels like the ultimate corporate
• 8:08
  lip service. It's the equivalent of hanging one
• 8:10
  of those motivational posters about integrity
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  in the break room next to the coffee machine.
• 8:15
  Right, the eagle soaring over the mountain. Exactly.
• 8:18
  Someone who is actively manipulating a CRM system
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  to hit a bonus threshold is not going to look
• 8:24
  at their pace lip, read a slogan about honesty,
• 8:28
  and suddenly have a moral awakening. Well, you're
• 8:30
  right. If they had just printed a slogan, it
• 8:32
  would have been completely meaningless. But the
• 8:34
  genius of the PaySlip initiative was the mechanism
• 8:38
  they placed immediately next to those values.
• 8:40
  The QR code? Yes. Right beside the net pay number
• 8:44
  and the core values, they printed a dynamic QR
• 8:47
  code and a direct hotline that opened an encrypted,
• 8:51
  completely anonymous, whistle -blowing portal.
• 8:53
  OK, yeah, that changes the dynamic completely.
• 8:55
  You aren't just giving them a platitude. You're
• 8:56
  giving them a weapon. It is a brilliant piece.
• 8:59
  of behavioral psychology. Think about the physical
• 9:02
  or digital action of looking at your compensation.
• 9:05
  That is the moment the employee is looking at
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  their financial reward from the organization.
• 9:09
  Right, they're literally looking at their money.
• 9:11
  Exactly. By placing the reporting channel right
• 9:14
  there... The company psychologically pairs the
• 9:17
  financial reward with the ethical expectation.
• 9:20
  The subliminal message shifts from here is your
• 9:23
  money to your livelihood is directly tied to
• 9:26
  the integrity of this firm. If you see someone
• 9:29
  jeopardizing that integrity, here is the exact
• 9:32
  tool to stop them and you can do it safely. They
• 9:36
  move the concept of ethics from a dusty compliance
• 9:39
  handbook into a highly visible bi -weekly financial
• 9:42
  interaction. It totally weaponizes the employee
• 9:45
  base against bad actors. It shifts the burden
• 9:48
  of surveillance from the compliance software
• 9:50
  onto the human network, which is super powerful.
• 9:52
  Very powerful. And actually, speaking of the
• 9:54
  human network, the source details another intervention
• 9:56
  that I really want to dissect. They deployed
• 9:58
  what they called a network of ambassadors and
• 10:01
  champions throughout the organization. Right.
• 10:03
  But again, I look at the mechanics of this, and
• 10:05
  I get skeptical. If you appoint an employee on
• 10:07
  the sales floor to be an ethic ambassador, Don't
• 10:10
  they just become the office informant? Yeah,
• 10:12
  the snitch. Right. They lose all their social
• 10:14
  capital because their peers just see them as
• 10:16
  an HR spy. They absolutely would be seen as spies
• 10:19
  if they were positioned as compliance monitors.
• 10:21
  But the source indicates the successful deployment
• 10:24
  of these ambassadors relied on a peer -to -peer
• 10:27
  mechanism, not a surveillance mechanism. So they
• 10:30
  weren't just low -level hall monitors. Exactly.
• 10:33
  These individuals were not junior employees reporting
• 10:35
  to HR. They were highly respected senior engineers,
• 10:39
  top -performing salespeople, and veteran logistics
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  managers. People who already had respect. People
• 10:44
  who already held immense social capital, yeah.
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  Their role wasn't to report minor infractions.
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  Their role was to act as embedded workflow guides
• 10:52
  with real veto power. Oh, I see. So they serve
• 10:56
  as a pressure release valve for the culture.
• 10:58
  Like, if a junior developer is being pressured
• 11:00
  by a manager to scrape data unethically to meet
• 11:02
  a product deadline, that developer might be way
• 11:05
  too afraid to go to HR. Definitely. But they
• 11:07
  can go to the ambassador, a senior engineer they
• 11:10
  already respect, who has the institutional clout
• 11:12
  to walk into the manager's office and push back
• 11:14
  on the deadline. That is the exact mechanism.
• 11:17
  You are building a human safety net that catches
• 11:20
  ethical gray areas long before they escalate
• 11:23
  into a fraud scandal. The ambassadors normalize
• 11:26
  the friction. They make it culturally acceptable
• 11:29
  to say no to a bad idea, which completely neuters
• 11:32
  that toxic win -at -all -costs mentality. Okay,
• 11:35
  so human intervention clearly solved the problem
• 11:38
  for this specific FTSE 100 company. The pace
• 11:41
  of reporting and the ambassadors really changed
• 11:43
  the daily habits, but that forces us to look
• 11:46
  at the massive issue of scale. Right, because
• 11:48
  not every company is built the same. Exactly.
• 11:50
  Human intervention is incredibly effective, but
• 11:52
  it does not scale easily. When an organization
• 11:55
  has 50 ,000 employees spread across 20 time zones,
• 11:58
  they inevitably have to rely on software to monitor
• 12:00
  behavior and track culture. So how does a company
• 12:03
  implement advanced technology without it just
• 12:06
  becoming another ignored rulebook? Well, the
• 12:08
  source is very clear that despite the necessity
• 12:11
  of human networks, achieving genuine cultural
• 12:13
  change at scale absolutely demands sophisticated
• 12:16
  tools. You cannot rely on human intuition to
• 12:19
  monitor the promotion rates of 50 ,000 employees.
• 12:22
  You'd need a million ambassadors. Exactly. Technology
• 12:26
  is unparalleled at identifying patterns and discrepancies.
• 12:30
  The strategy is that the technology must be deliberately
• 12:33
  paired with leadership accountability structures.
• 12:37
  You use the software to find the problem, but
• 12:40
  you use the human management system to enforce
• 12:42
  the solution. Let's apply that to a specific
• 12:45
  use case from the source material, diversity
• 12:48
  and inclusion initiative. Okay, great example.
• 12:50
  Because many massive organizations use highly
• 12:52
  advanced HR technology, like these interactive
• 12:55
  dashboards, to track workforce demographics.
• 12:58
  The software can instantly analyze the entire
• 13:01
  workforce and flag exactly where gaps in representation
• 13:04
  exist or where specific demographics are stalling
• 13:07
  out in middle management. Right. The technology
• 13:09
  gives perfect visibility. Perfect visibility,
• 13:11
  yes, but perfect visibility does not equal cultural
• 13:14
  change. Which brings up a massive structural
• 13:16
  risk. When you introduce a metric -driven dashboard
• 13:19
  to corporate leaders, you almost inevitably trigger
• 13:22
  Goodheart's Law. Right. The idea that when a
• 13:25
  measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good
• 13:27
  measure. Exactly. If an HR dashboard flags a
• 13:30
  diversity discrepancy in a specific department
• 13:33
  and the VP knows that dashboard needs to be green
• 13:36
  for their quarterly review, they will just treat
• 13:39
  it as a box -ticking exercise. They'll game it.
• 13:41
  Yeah. They might poach diverse talent from another
• 13:44
  department or make token hires just to satisfy
• 13:46
  the algorithm. The technology actually incentivizes
• 13:50
  them to game the system rather than build a genuinely
• 13:53
  inclusive culture. So, how do you force a leader
• 13:56
  to care about the underlying culture rather than
• 13:58
  just manipulating the data? If we connect this
• 14:02
  to the bigger picture, you counter the gaming
• 14:04
  of the system by changing what the leaders actually
• 14:07
  evaluated on. The technology's only job is to
• 14:10
  identify the discrepancy. But the human mechanism,
• 14:13
  the performance review, must target the process.
• 14:16
  not just the output metric. Ah, I see. According
• 14:19
  to the source, the solution requires embedding
• 14:21
  cultural values directly into performance evaluations
• 14:24
  by focusing on actions like mentoring and promotion
• 14:27
  support. So you don't evaluate the VP on whether
• 14:29
  the dashboard is green or red. You evaluate them
• 14:31
  on how they responded to the dashboard being
• 14:33
  red. Precisely. The organization removes the
• 14:37
  incentive to make a token higher. When that VP
• 14:40
  sits down for their annual performance review,
• 14:42
  their bonus isn't tied to hitting a raw demographic
• 14:45
  headcount. Right. The conversation is entirely
• 14:48
  different. It becomes, hey, the HR dashboard
• 14:52
  identified a discrepancy in the promotion rates
• 14:54
  of diverse talent within your division. In the
• 14:57
  last six months, what specific measurable mentoring
• 15:01
  have you personally undertaken to develop the
• 15:03
  talent pipeline? Show us the structural changes
• 15:06
  you made to your hiring panels. Oh, wow, that
• 15:08
  completely flips the incentive structure. You
• 15:10
  bridge the gap between the software and the human
• 15:12
  behavior. Yeah, it forces accountability. The
• 15:14
  technology provides the undeniable data point,
• 15:17
  but the leadership process forces the executive
• 15:20
  to engage in the actual messy work of culture
• 15:22
  building. If a leader knows their own upward
• 15:25
  mobility is explicitly tied to the time they
• 15:27
  spend actively mentoring, they cannot outsource
• 15:30
  that to a software algorithm. They have to actually
• 15:32
  do the work. It requires aligning the core systems
• 15:35
  of the company with the values articulated at
• 15:38
  the top. If a company claims to value ethical
• 15:41
  behavior and inclusive cultures, but solely rewards
• 15:45
  and promotes leaders based on raw revenue generation.
• 15:48
  The stated values are just completely irrelevant.
• 15:51
  Exactly. Employees are incredibly perceptive.
• 15:54
  They don't listen to what the company says. They
• 15:56
  watch who the company promotes. To shape a future
• 16:00
  -ready, resilient organizational culture, the
• 16:03
  systems of reward and punishment must mirror
• 16:05
  the ethical framework. So pulling all these threads
• 16:08
  together, the initial reluctance of boards to
• 16:11
  fund compliance, the failure of static policies
• 16:13
  to keep up with exponential technology, the psychology
• 16:16
  of the payslip reporting and the restructuring
• 16:18
  of performance reviews, it becomes really clear
• 16:20
  that fostering accountability is a shared structural
• 16:23
  responsibility. That's everyone's job. It isn't
• 16:25
  just a matter of hiring a business integrity
• 16:27
  officer. Every system, from how people are paid
• 16:30
  to how they are evaluated, must be engineered
• 16:33
  to reward the right habits. And while we have
• 16:36
  spent this discussion focusing on massive corporate
• 16:38
  entities and complex organizational systems,
• 16:41
  this concept of daily habits overriding stated
• 16:44
  policies applies just as heavily on a personal
• 16:47
  level. Wait, really? How so? Well, think about
• 16:50
  your own life and the systems you have in place.
• 16:53
  Organizations fail when their stated policies
• 16:55
  don't match the daily habits of their employees,
• 16:58
  right? Right. On a personal level, we all have
• 17:01
  stated policies. The values we claim to hold,
• 17:04
  the priorities we tell our friends and family,
• 17:06
  are most important to us. But the daily practice
• 17:08
  often tells a very different story. Which leads
• 17:11
  to a final provocative thought for you to consider
• 17:13
  today. If a stranger could never hear what you
• 17:16
  claim your personal values are... But they were
• 17:18
  given full access to audit the technology of
• 17:20
  your daily habits. Oh, man Yeah, if they could
• 17:23
  review your bank statements to see exactly where
• 17:25
  your money goes Check your phone screen time
• 17:28
  to see where your attention goes and observe
• 17:30
  who you actively spend time mentoring or helping
• 17:32
  What would they conclude your actual personal?
• 17:36
  corporate culture is. That is a phenomenal audit
• 17:39
  to run on yourself because ultimately whether
• 17:41
  you are managing a 50 ,000 person global workforce
• 17:45
  or just trying to navigate your own week, you
• 17:47
  cannot just install a state -of -the -art security
• 17:49
  system and leave the front door wide open. Exactly.
• 17:53
  The daily habits have to match the hardware.
• 17:56
  Thank you so much for joining us on this deep
• 17:58
  dive. Keep questioning the sisters around you
• 18:00
  and we will catch you next time.