MenuIn a recent entry on his always excellent blog, SCCE CEO Roy Snell talks about a study in which the use of the word “because” is shown to be powerfully effective in influencing others. (“We need to leave now” is presumably less effective than “We need to leave now because we are about to be late.”) Roy makes a point about the quality and integrity of the “because.” “We need to formulate our “because”… thoughtfully before we ask people to do things,” he says. “People can see through and are not motivated by the ‘manufactured because.’”
Compliance Communications Blog
Joel A. Rogers
Recent Posts
Oct 08, 2014 •
Every time there is a paradigm shift in any arena, a new vocabulary – either new words or new meanings to older words – emerges to account for a host of novel concepts. By way of a range of examples, consider:
Sep 30, 2014 •
Reflect, for one moment, on just how much you know about McDonald’s. (It doesn’t matter whether you love McDonald’s or would never be caught dead in one; this works either way.) You know the names of many of their foods. You know that an Egg McMuffin is eggs on an English muffin with cheese and Canadian bacon, and if you made a sandwich at home that looked like that you might have to resist the urge to call it an Egg McMuffin. You probably even know that the Shamrock Shake only comes around at certain times of the year, and you will remember the Hamburglar and Ronald McDonald for the rest of your life.
AND YET: You have never read a single policy related to Big Macs. You have never received annual training on eating Chicken McNuggets. You have never signed a Certification that says that you know who Grimace is and that you agree that he is a big, affable purple guy.
Sep 10, 2014 •
For the past few years the debate has raged: Is it OK to use humor to communicate compliance? What sparked this dialogue was a series of amusing compliance and ethics videos produced by one of the world’s premiere comedy brands. These guys know humor and many of those videos have been genuinely funny.
Some feel that funny videos are an incredible breath of fresh air. “Finally, something that will get our employees’ attention, something they will want to watch,” they said. Others think that compliance is too serious a topic to be conveyed with humor.
Aug 20, 2014 •
Three months ago I was on a United Airlines flight from Newark to London with a colleague named John. About an hour before landing at Heathrow, standing to retrieve something from the overhead compartment, John looked back about five rows and saw that another passenger was choking on a piece of bread. Not the coughing-and-smiling-and-saying-everything-is-fine kind of choking, but the completely-unable-to-breathe-or-speak kind of choking. Really choking. Before I was even aware that something was happening, John (an Eagle Scout and all around good guy) had moved into position, got behind the guy, and performed the Heimlich Maneuver with two thrusts of his fists to the choking man’s diaphragm. The piece of bread was expelled; the man’s life was saved.
