This week: because, because, because

This week, Clear Course looks at two causes that are important to landing your long-term plan. Let’s dive in.

This week’s Driver: The cause of legal issues

Its much easier to predict something (and to believe you can predict something) if you understand what actually causes that thing. Because if you understand that cause, you’re much less likely to be led astray by addressing a rogue symptom. And that applies to legal stuff as much as anything. So what does cause legal issues?  

To answer that, its helpful to look first at what people think causes legal problems.

As I’ve said before, pretty much every business and CEO's default strategy for legal stuff is to cross your fingers, hope for the best that it doesn't happen, then react quickly and fight like mad if it does. That's because they think legal stuff is unpredictable.

And, at first glance, that seems understandable: after all, legal stuff can arise from a number of different directions and topics, often with no warning. And some of those directions and topics can be very technical and specific, like when it involves the wording of specific laws or contracts.

But from my 20 years as a GC, I know that legal issues don’t actually originate from the detailed provision of a regulation or an agreement. Yes, detailed legal provisions are certainly relevant context, they help determine the size and shape of a legal issue. But they don’t cause it.

Instead, all legal stuff starts with a person. Every single legal issue your business could face will be started by a person who has a relationship with your business that they don't feel is working as well as it should. It’s as simple as that: every single legal issue is thought up by a person.  

And that’s a good thing when it comes to protecting your business. Because if it’s a person that is the cause of all legal stuff – if legal issues originate from that other person thinking of them – then so can you. Because, just like them, you've got a brain, and you can apply it to put yourself in their shoes and try to think like they would. You just need to make it a priority to actually do that thinking. And we’ll help you with that in the upcoming editions of Clear Course.

This week’s sleeper: Telling people what to do

Policies. Gotta have ‘em, haven’t you, especially as your business get bigger? After all, there are certain things that everyone in the organisation just needs to do.

Still, no-one is going to like those policies, though, are they? After all, as CEO of a growing business, you worry that policies are going to slow things down and strangle your business’ growth. While staff don’t like policies as they’re yet another thing they have to read, be trained on and follow in what’s already a pretty full ‘To Do’ list.  And yet here policies still are, prevalent up and down businesses, right across the world, because what other choice do you have?

Having led compliance programs across my 18 years as a General Counsel, I can tell you that a dislike for policies is far from inevitable in a business. 

My colleagues right across ASOS couldn’t have been more averse to anything ‘corporate’ if they’d tried. But they still embraced what we needed them to do to help protect the business. The policies we had at ASOS were also integral to the business being able to soar like a rocket without burning up. So it isn’t also inevitable that policies will slow a business down, or stifle its growth, either.

People absolutely can embrace policies, making those policies way more effective. But only if the business in question goes out of its way to avoid this one lazy assumption.

Don’t assume that people will just do what you tell them.

Yes, I know you pay your staff. And I know that does gives you the ability and platform to tell them what to do. But that doesn’t mean that approach actually works.

No-one responds well to coercion.  Demanding things works once, maybe twice. After that, telling people what to do just becomes background noise, and breeds ambivalence, disengagement, ridicule or even contempt. So don’t just tell people what to do.

Instead, talk to them about why something is important. Tell them about why this thing really matters to the business they’re in and to you as their CEO.  Get them to understand the threat. Understanding creates action, not coercion.

And tell them about that ‘why’ in whatever way is going get their attention and engage them.  Even the perfect description of a ‘why’ is pointless if its not going to be noticed and taken in by your audience. At ASOS I wanted to write compliance messages on the free banana that everyone got every day: I knew that would be noticed by my famously ‘anti-corporate’ colleagues. So work out what will actually connect with your audience, and use that method, even if it is left field. 

So don’t sleep on policies being there to tell people what to do. If you do that, your long-term plan will remain at risk from the thing you’ve issued the instruction about.  

Instead, focus your policies on telling people why something needs to happen and do that in the most engaging way you can.  Then go watch them do whatever needs to be done of their own accord, to protect your long-term plan from that thing.

Till next week

Andrew