Is the Voice of Risk Being Heard?

“If only HP knew how much HP knows, we would be three times more productive,” Hewlett-Packard CEO Lew Platt said.

Had Mr. Platt been talking about his sales organization, he would have pumped up the multiple. Sales teams possess a trove of valuable commercial knowledge. It’s not unusual to find reps who are fluent in finance, marketing, strategy, product engineering and customer support. Some have lived or studied abroad. Some are multi-lingual. Add street smarts about customer behavior, and you’ve got formidable brainpower.

Good for customers, but unsettling for employers. Knowledge and risk awareness go hand-in-hand. That can threaten mangers, especially when assigning individual quotas and sales targets. A bit less knowledge makes team members more compliant. Naivete makes management’s fuzzy planning numerology and “stretch goals” easier to swallow. “Team! Get out there and nail your quota!” Woe to the salesperson who tells her boss, “I have a 70% chance of making my number.” In sales culture, determinism is revered while probabilistic thinking gets ravaged.

More! Faster! Better! In this make-your-number-no-matter-what environment, the voices of risk get stifled. Problems don’t surface. Issues remain under wraps. Objections aren’t discussed. “We need to keep meetings short and use our time efficiently,” senior sales executives tell me. “Besides, we aren’t interested in dealing with stuff we can’t change.” Yes . . . But . . . There are significant hard costs when management cannot assess vulnerabilities, let alone, even know what they are.

More than ever, organizations need to be intelligent about uncertainty and risk. Something that former Wells Fargo CEO John Stumpf didn’t appreciate before he landed in a hot seat in front of Senator Elizabeth Warren, who eviscerated him with questions about his company’s widespread abuses. Stumpf looked like a deer facing headlights. Warren provided most of the answers, too.

In fact, Stumpf deliberately insulated himself from what was happening in the field by brutally crushing the voices of risk. Using a cudgel called U5, management silenced internal dissent, enabling Wells to implement practices that exploited its customers and employees. U5, a federal form, was intended to prevent financial services employees who commit fraud and other violations from hopping from firm to firm and repeating their transgressions. But Wells Fargo’s management warped U5’s beneficial purpose to intimidate sales employees into submitting to their heinous demands.

When slapped onto an employment record, U5 carries serious consequences. To hiring managers, it means “don’t hire this candidate.” To employees, it means “Move to a Caribbean island and open a sunglasses stand because you’re not working in financial services. Not now. Not later. Not ever.” U5 made it possible for Wells Fargo’s Management to deliver an ominous message to its staff: if you have the temerity to speak out, blow the whistle, complain, resist, or express unhappiness or unwillingness, we will ruin you. And they meant every word.

We will never know with certainty which statements got silenced, but here are a few possibilities:

“These goals are impossible.”
“My customers don’t like our policies.”
“I’m uncomfortable doing this. It’s unethical.”
“The stress here is burning me out and making me sick.”
“No. This is wrong.”

The voice of risk, U5’d. A well-known verb in the bank’s HR Department, I am sure. With U5 and the repressive sales culture at Wells Fargo, untold millions of similar comments never reached the vocal chords – and keyboards – of its employees. A tiny few seeped out. Just not enough to awaken regulators and Wells Fargo’s board of directors from their slumber. It took an outsider’s report – an investigative article in the LA Times – to goad anyone into action. If you want to crush the voice of risk, here’s your model!

Voicing risk, pushing back, calling out red flags, blowing the whistle – use any terms you want. Wells Fargo used the threat of severe punishment to systematically turn off every communication management didn’t want to hear. An extreme case, for sure, but far from isolated. Where there’s disdain for knowing the truth, a company’s sales culture will reveal it:

“Sell what we’ve got!”

“I don’t want to hear how you aren’t going to make your number, I want to hear how you are!”

“Don’t give me problems. Give me solutions!”

“Stop making excuses!”

“Quit whining!”

One of the most effective ways to shut down the voice of risk is to brand an employee as “not a team player,” or “doesn’t believe in the company’s potential.” It’s not U5, but punitively, it might be the next best thing. Try getting promoted or landing a better sales territory with those tidbits embellishing your personnel record. Management’s message: “if you want to stay here, do as we say, and don’t rock the boat.”

“But . . . nobody wants a department full of Chicken Littles, either!” Fair point. Pre-decision, there are clear strategic advantages to being picky about which facts and information one accepts. Managers must have flexibility to determine what’s useful and valuable, and what to eschew. After all, in sales and selling, there are no universally recognized standards for framing the truth. Look at any B2B sales organization, and you’ll see different managers using different dashboards, and no two turning the same dials and knobs.

Yet, there’s a distinction between healthy selectivity and willful ignorance. Sales culture must never be an accomplice to the latter. I’m being Pollyanna because the problem is epidemic. The history of corporate failures is littered with companies that above all, created horribly skewed versions of reality. Many were organizations where deterministic thinking prevailed, and the voices of risk were maligned and ignored. “Employees are our greatest asset! But doubters and naysayers need not apply.”

Make sure the voices of risk are not silenced at your company. That result begins with the board. In an article, Culture: The One Element Most Critical for the Board’s Management of Risk , Jay Taylor, CEO of EagleNext Advisors, recommends six questions to ask:

• Is the CEO active in creating the culture for the organization? Is he or she modeling the right behaviors?

• Is there appropriate tone at the top, both during and outside of board meetings?

• During strategy, product, and investment discussions, is there transparency around business assumptions, openness to respectful but challenging views, and identification of emerging risks to the business model beyond the immediate planning horizon?

• Is there a willingness to bring forward bad news? Is there an understanding that failure may occur, but the business cannot grow and prosper without taking smart risks?

• Has the board established clear expectations for timely identification and handling of risk, particularly those around business goals and objectives? Is there clear risk ownership?

• Not everything should be filtered through the CEO. Are other executives and risk owners present at board meetings and allowed to take questions directly?

The answers to these questions directly influence the culture within the sales force. They influence the strategy, tactics, compensation, and measurements under which business development teams operate. When salespeople believe that the board views risk management, governance and compliance as a crucial responsibility, an ethical environment can be established within the sales organization. The converse is also true: when it’s evident the board doesn’t want to be bothered with protecting the company’s stakeholders, [stuff] will happen. We saw how that works at Wells Fargo.

In addition,

1. It’s understandable that not every anecdote from the sales force constitutes an “action item,” but make sure it’s clear that salespeople will not be penalized for voicing issues to management.

2. Don’t limit account reviews to “wins.” In meetings and internal communication, allow frank discussion about what impedes selling, and make sure no person or department is held sacrosanct in the conversation.

3. Don’t condemn people for probabilistic thinking. Instead, embrace the approach! That won’t make anyone less determined, resolute, or rabidly goal-focused. In fact, the sales team and its managers will become more risk-aware.

4. Appoint at least one board member to serve as a direct point-of-contact for salespeople who want to elevate concerns about illegal or unethical practices, or any other activity that endangers the company, its employees or its customers.

Uncork the knowledge that exists in your sales organization. Giving risk a voice, and a safe way to express it, provides a measurable financial return. And in the case of Wells Fargo, it could have saved the company from itself.