Overheard at the Airport (or why the same compliance training still isn't working)
Originally published on LinkedIn on January 30, 2024
I was sitting in the airport waiting for my first of two flights home the other day when a man was walking towards me, looking for a working plug in those terrible airport benches.
“Watch out,” I said, “the plugs in those two don’t work.”
We made small talk about how we were both flying home before both going about our business.
This man, we’ll call him Mr. Biz, got on his phone and made a call to a coworker, someone I assume was his direct report.
Mr. Biz started talking about creating a few reports about MSRP.
OK, so he’s in the car business. Maybe Mr. Biz is a car salesperson or manager.
Then he started talking about volume, production, and being competitive with specific car manufacturers.
Mr. Biz started rattling off names about his coworkers abroad.
I knew immediately who Mr. Biz worked for.
Mr. Biz was traveling between two company sites that are close to our departure and arrival airports.
To seal the deal, Mr. Biz used the not-so-well-known acronym for his company.
Yikes.
It wasn’t too hard to piece together this very non-public, confidential, and competitive information.
If I was a malicious person, I could do something with this information.
Instead, I just figuratively covered my ears and screamed, “I CANT HEAR YOU!!” in my head.
I was on the phone muttering about my trip and the person I was speaking with asked me how far away Mr. Biz was because he was heard on the other end of my call.
The compliance person in me wanted to scold Mr. Biz for discussing competitive information in a very public setting, but I can't go around policing everyone else's compliance missteps. That's just not a good look for the compliance function.
This situation hit me on a deeper level, too. Mr. Biz’s company once passed me over for two reasons: to rehire a former employee (who didn’t end up staying) and because I was too much of a dynamo and “that’s not the way it’s always been done here and we’ve worked very hard for that.”
And I can’t say that what I would’ve done in the compliance program would have prevented Mr. Biz from doing what he did today (and likely every time he travels) but doing the same thing you’ve been doing obviously isn’t working.
So, if you think you’re a compliance person working for Mr. Biz’s company or if this scenario hits too close to home for you, maybe it’s time to actually train your people on traveling for work and handling competitive information. Me and many others at the gate have heard way too much about your product development plans.
It’s time to evolve your program and make compliance simple and accessible to everyone.
If you’re a compliance person, what would you do in this situation?
Would you have waited for Mr. Biz to end his call and have some fun by telling him you work for one of his competitors?
I wish I would have thought of that in the moment and not run to Airport McDonald's for overpriced McNuggets and fries.
