On this episode of Culture & Compliance Chronicles, Nitish Upadhyaya from Ropes & Gray’s Insights Lab and Richard Bistrong of Front-Line Anti-Bribery, are joined by Letitia Adu-Ampoma, a seasoned compliance professional with extensive experience in designing and implementing ethics and compliance programs across multiple continents. Letitia shares her invaluable insights on the importance of contextualizing and operationalizing global compliance to local cultures. She emphasizes the need for organizations to understand and adapt to cultural nuances, including demographics, linguistic nuances, and technology, to ensure the effectiveness of their compliance programs. Through engaging anecdotes and practical examples, Letitia illustrates how cultural differences can impact compliance outcomes and the importance of localizing training and policies. Tune in to learn how to navigate the complexities of global compliance, the significance of cultural awareness, and strategies for integrating local insights into your compliance framework.
Transcript
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Nitish Upadhyaya: Welcome back to the Culture & Compliance Chronicles, the podcast that gives you new perspectives on legal, compliance and regulatory challenges faced by organizations and individuals worldwide. The clue is in the title—culture is at the heart of everything. It’s the endlessly shifting patterns that govern our environment and behaviors. The magic is in amplifying certain patterns and dampening others. Let’s see if we can pique your curiosity, get you to challenge some of your perceptions and give you space to think differently about some of your own challenges. I’m Nitish Upadhyaya, and today, I’m joined by Richard Bistrong. Hi, Richard.
Richard Bistrong: Nitish, pleasure to join you, and Happy New Year. Great to start the year again with another series of Culture & Compliance Chronicles.
Nitish Upadhyaya: Absolutely. A whole new year, and a whole host of new perspectives. After our Christmas episode where Danny Mayhew took us through some really interesting ideas around organizational justice and fairness, how listening to folks and guiding them potentially before they make mistakes can really give you a new way of thinking about your compliance program. Who do we have in store for listeners today?
[01:20] About Letitia
Richard Bistrong: I’m very excited that we’re kicking off the New Year with our guest Letitia Adu-Ampoma. Letitia, I have had the honor and pleasure of getting to know her. She is a compliance professional with 15 years of operational experience in the design and implementation of ethics and compliance programs for multinationals across the U.K., Europe, Asia, and Africa. While Letitia is currently based in London and is the global head for a social impact project developer focused on climate finance, prior to taking up her HQ roles, Letitia worked for 10 years based in Africa, where she implemented compliance programs in the African operations of a number of multinational companies. She joins us today to share insights that she has gained through her career on the importance of contextualizing and operationalizing global compliance to local cultures. Speaking more personally, I have had the pleasure of meeting Letitia, working with her at compliance events, and working with her in her current capacity, so the one thing I can share is she is not shy, so I can’t wait to dive right in.
Letitia Adu-Ampoma: Thank you, Richard. That’s a great intro. I appreciate it. Looking forward to the conversation.
Nitish Upadhyaya: Before we jump into all of your experiences from all of your various roles, let’s help the audience get to know you. Give us three things that we should know.
Letitia Adu-Ampoma: I’m somebody who always believes in the importance of counting blessings. So, the first thing, I have been in, experienced, and survived a Category 5 hurricane, Hurricane Ivan, in 2004. Second thing, I’ve felt very blessed to have had the opportunity to meet Nelson Mandela while he was president. I was in a junior role in the company—I had the opportunity. And the third thing is I have a beautiful daughter, aged 12 years.
Nitish Upadhyaya: Brilliant. We’re starting to get to know you better. Now, some questions maybe slightly more left field. What are you curious about?
Letitia Adu-Ampoma: I’ve always been curious about is people and why people do things, whether it’s good or bad, and whether it’s individually or in groups. I have siblings, and I was the individual in the family who was always watching and observing, so when the fights broke out, I would never get involved. But I’ve always been intrigued by what individual people do and why—what drives them, good or bad.
Nitish Upadhyaya: That’s brilliant, and I suspect we’re going to touch on a lot of that during the course of this conversation. Before we get in there, all of our listeners are intensely human, and they get surprised. What’s the last thing that surprised you?
Letitia Adu-Ampoma: I think Gen Z’s always getting hit up for being quite difficult, but I think the last thing that surprised me was the social consciousness of Gen Z. My daughter’s 12, and I guess she’s the tail end of that. She was born and brought up in Ghana, in contrast to me. I remember when she was age five, and I had a traumatic experience as a parent. School says, “Teach your daughter to use Microsoft Word.” So, we do that. She has a Ghanaian name, which is Nyamekye, which is not spelled in any way familiar with the English consonants. And she says, “Why does it mark my name as a spelling mistake? Because when I put ‘Jane’ in, it doesn’t mark my name as a spelling mistake.” That was really insightful, because this was age five or six, and I’m not sure I would have had that insightfulness at age five—I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t. She was studying in Ghana—she had not been to the U.K. at this point in time. I just think there is a change in the world happening.
[05:10] Why is Contextualizing Compliance to Local Cultures so Important?
Richard Bistrong: Why don’t we jump right in? Letitia, let’s start at a high level: Why is contextualizing and operationalizing global compliance to local cultures so important?
Letitia Adu-Ampoma: I think it’s important on a number of layers nowadays. I think with globalization, the world has changed. The reality is that big organizations will largely have some sort of footprint in Asia, Africa, Latin America—what is sometimes termed as the “Global South”—in whatever industry, even the knowledge-based industries, the tech, the information exchange, and definitely manufacturing, etc., because of supply chain. I think the second thing is the reality of consumers and market growth. Those are the continents with growing populations and young populations—they are providing the markets of the future, whichever industry people are in. There is also an increasingly, not just cultural exchange but, cultural dominance, whether it’s in music or etc., so, that’s becoming a lot more apparent, and maybe it’s speeded up by technology and accessibility. I think that, finally, the third thing is just there are so many elements of compliance programs nowadays that do have cross-jurisdictional context and cross-cultural context, whether it’s supply chain, human rights or data privacy. Even in the Western world, you have different approaches between the U.S. and Europe. Following the Cambridge Analytica scandal and the knowledge of people’s data or systems’ data being used to skew elections, etc., these topics have not just become cross-cultural but, sadly, geopolitical as well. So, the bottom line is the cultural context of compliance programs and making sure they work in cultural context is now quite critical.
Richard Bistrong: Staying with that big picture, Letitia, and thinking about global compliance programs as a whole, where do you start the journey of integrating a cultural context into a global approach?
Letitia Adu-Ampoma: Essentially, compliance programs are trying to make sure that people either behave in a certain way in accordance with their roles, expectations, etc., or that they respond to triggers in a particular way, because we can’t create rules for everything. So, the idea is you want people to respond to triggers in situations they may not have anticipated with reference to specific principles and guidelines, and ideally, you want that behavior to be instinctive and natural. So, that’s the first thing. There’s psychology in there—bottom line. Sales psychology says there has to be an emotional connection to achieve that. Additional studies of psychology, neuro-linguistic programming, say that has to happen. And thirdly, we need to make sure the Western culture can be translated and principles adopted.
[08:15] How to “Trigger” the Right Kind of Behaviors
Richard Bistrong: So, what might be a trigger? Could you give us an example of what that practically might mean?
Letitia Adu-Ampoma: Yes. So, a Harvard professor—I’m not saying he’s the solution for it, but—he came up with an acronym, WEIRD: Western, Educated, Individualistic, Rich and Democratic. This is Joseph Henrich, who has a book with that title, and in there, he recognizes modes of thinking from the Global West that may not be replicated in other cultures. And so, when you look at something like the control that you want to implement, the reality is you need to make sure whatever standard control is that the outcome you want is going to be achieved in different countries in terms of the response or the behavior to that control. That’s the key, because the bottom line is we create controls with an assumption about how people will respond to it, and that may have our own biases or specific cultural biases in that context, and we may not get the response that we want if we haven’t taken into account other cultural contexts.
Nitish Upadhyaya: I think that is such a fundamental issue that people fail to understand or appreciate over and over again. In the payroll science world, for example, lots of studies are done in and with people from WEIRD backgrounds, often American schools, British schools, or organizations that subscribe to cultural values that are one of many different values from across the world. And so, even when people are trying to translate the research and the findings across to, say, India, China or other places around the world, they’re finding what they might term “strange outcomes” or “strange behaviors,” and it isn’t—it’s just that you’ve taken a situation from one context and tried to put it in something else. I have lots of stories from the behavioral science world about things not quite working out, but I wonder if you have some interesting stories from the compliance world about translations that have failed, and—potentially spectacularly, across geographies, cultural boundaries, even within countries in different regions—things not quite landing so well.
Letitia Adu-Ampoma: The U.S., in the past, in the pharma world, implemented what they call the U.S. sunshine laws—and in Europe, they had the equivalent. Obviously, pharma had had lots of compliance scandals in terms of inappropriately influencing medical professionals, so the principle was there needed to be tracking and transparency around any transfers of value to medical professionals. For pharma companies who spend time educating doctors on new drugs, etc.—some of these companies may have just been inviting people to symposiums to educate them on a drug—there’s transfer of value there, not just in education, but there might have been hospitality in terms of lunch or whatever. And so, the requirement, globally, fully understood, was to make sure pharma companies could track and report the transfers of value to every single medical professional around the world. In the Western world, the engagement with the medical professionals is planned in advance. Essentially, they have these one-year programs, so they get the doctors to confirm, in advance, they’re going to attend these symposiums or whatever, and from that, they report—and that’s the control. The outcome is to get the exact data of what events doctors have attended, what transfers of value happened, etc.
Try and do that in other countries, which may have a different relationship with time, firstly, and secondly, other practical things. I happened to be sitting in a number of African countries at the time, where they wanted to roll this out. These medical reps have a target of having a certain number of meetings with these medical professionals each month or each quarter. In these contexts, the doctors are not going to commit to something in three to four weeks’ time, because culturally it’s just alien—the relationship with time is different. Secondly, this is where sensitivity comes into play. You go to a rural hospital in Ghana or Nigeria, and the doctor is dealing with sick patients who can’t pay for their medical care. He doesn’t know if he’s going to have electricity the next day. They’ve got significant operations. So, his priority is not signing a piece of paper for a multinational company to say, “In three weeks’ time, I’m going to attend your symposium.” Unfortunately, what happened with this control is that, essentially, then you have your sales reps just submitting lists of doctors, so your data is totally false. Now, you can’t then blame all your sales force who you have recruited and say they’re all corrupt, because this was just a case of the control not working.
What we did was talk to the country managers to identify that all they need is a different way of implementation. Let the sales guys who know their pitches come up with a list of symposiums and number of people who will attend. On the day, the doctors sign in, so you match that number with the number of people who were there. And we did even better—at the end of the event, you take a group photo to say, “thank you for attending,” and that would be a thank you card. So, you have, a) the data of who signed and attended, and b) with permission, the pictures that show they were there, and then, all that falsification of lists of doctors disappeared. That was an example where the control was designed with assumptions of Western culture in terms of how people relate to time and how they’re going to respond for a request.
Nitish Upadhyaya: What a brilliant example of showing things that didn’t translate and then, working around that and embracing the cultural differences, realizing that it wasn’t going to work, thinking differently, and having the humility to accept that that wasn’t the case, and leaning into the cultural outcome.
Letitia Adu-Ampoma: I think the most important thing is you get the ultimate compliance outcome that you want. You get the data more accurately in the way that is required.
[14:20] Calibrating Controls to Support Ethical Cultural Outcomes
Nitish Upadhyaya: But that says something to the rigidity, I think, of a one-size-fits-all program, and potentially, the savings that people have in terms of, “We’ve got this one process. We’ll roll it out everywhere because it’s standardized, it’s generalizable. That’s the budget we have—that’s what we will use.” What else are you seeing? How are you seeing people become more thoughtful about how they are applying these standards or these desires for outcomes across cultural contexts?
Letitia Adu-Ampoma: I think where it’s most successful is where people actually listen and hear the solutions or the responses from different operations around the world or whatever context you’re trying to implement in. I think there is the beauty in experience when you get leaders who have actually stepped on the outside and been in countries where they worked for four or five years in a different culture. But the key, for me, is the solution is always there—you just have to ask, listen and hear. If you tell people the outcome you want, very clearly, whether it’s data or information, “This is what we need to happen in terms of behavior and outcomes,” they will come up with a process in the cultural context for you. I think the challenge is sometimes people don’t always hear—they will listen, and then maybe not process because it sounds a bit strange, and then discount.
Richard Bistrong: Fascinating. It talks to, again, the importance of, “What are we looking for?” We’re looking for an outcome, and we need to have the structures contextualized and operationalized, to drive those outcomes, not necessarily the other way around. When it comes to ethics and compliance learning, training and awareness, Letitia, for many companies, the default might be, for example, “Here’s our anti-bribery training, and here’s how many languages we need it in.” So, it’s one bit of training, and then either subtitled or dubbed on a global basis. Based on the discussions we’re having, it might seem that that might also not be the best way to contextualize and operationalize these global messages. Any thoughts about awareness and education?
Letitia Adu-Ampoma: You start from the global picture, the global training with dubbing, but to make it effective, if you really want those KPIs or results in terms of impact of your training, there has to be a localization of it. For me, that would be in terms of dealing with the scenarios that people actually really come up with, and I think that’s where, sometimes, either compliance departments are stretched, so they don’t have the resources, or they don’t like to do the work. Organizations really need to support their employees and enable them to adhere to the outcomes that they want. If you’re a business which has a lot of stuff going through customs in different markets, you need to address the scenarios that your employees are going to come up with and actually give them examples in your anti-bribery training and what you expect. Leaving it at the high, global level with subtitles and expecting them to do that interpretation and application, to a certain extent, sometimes can be seen as unfair because they’ll also have incentives and targets from the same company as well—and I think that’s where the challenge obviously comes. So, localized scenarios that are included in the training or are used as an addition to the training when rolled out.
Nitish Upadhyaya: And maybe you have more senior folks who haven’t been anywhere apart from HQ. What tips do you give them for understanding local culture on the ground, make sure that messaging, initiatives or whatever it might be that they’re trying to get across are fit for purpose, are relevant, and also take into account local customs and the way things are done on the ground?
Letitia Adu-Ampoma: First of all, if you’re seeing HQ, as far as possible, if you can get some individuals in your team who have had the expertise of working in the different regions or cultures where you are rolling out your compliance program, that’s great. Secondly, I think in the absence of that or in addition to that, establish a little group of advisors that may be your operational heads in the different countries whom you ask to input, and you ask them to give you honest input into your initiatives. But once again, it’s about the communication, because sometimes, people ask for input without being clear. Compliance is universal in terms of wanting to do the right thing. I do believe that every human being, irrespective of where they’ve ended up, wants to do the right thing—it’s sadly just the frame that they may end up in. So, if we communicate the outcomes that we want, essentially, people in different global contexts, in different cultural contexts will be able to give you the answers as to, “This is what needs to happen for us to achieve this.” Or they’ll tell you what the blockers are, and it may be, as a large organization, you have to deal with that in a country context.
Richard Bistrong: Can we take a deeper dive into that just in terms of, for someone who’s sitting in HQ or regional HQ even, and who hasn’t had that international, localized experience but is looking for that feedback, what are some of the structures that you think can be put in place to make sure you’re getting those opinions?
[20:05] Structures that Support Contextualizing Ethics and Compliance
Letitia Adu-Ampoma: I had this in one organization I worked with—I worked with the head of operations. Essentially, you came up with a representative sample of country managers or local CEOs covering Africa, Asia and Latin America who were consulted on every single compliance policy, every single change, and indeed, every single control, and they gave the input and the qualification before we did anything—that’s the first thing. If I take the example of whistleblowing—this is always a big contention, it’s very difficult across different cultures—I think that’s the one to speak to people about, because that’s where the individual, the WEIRD culture does not resonate. Whistleblowing in the Western world, they talk about individual responsibility, speaking up and the individual protections, and you’re dealing in cultures where people are communal. They might not speak unless they can speak in a group, and they want consultation.
Nitish Upadhyaya: I think that point around framing is so important—having that local knowledge and understanding how folks will see the same message. And we do this quite often. A simple, same message that you’re trying to give someone—you interpret it in 10 different ways because you’ve got 10 different cultural lenses, and your own experiences, and things that go with. I remember hearing a story about—coming back to parenting—people who try and get their kids to eat their food. A Western mindset might be, “You should eat this food. I’ve spent this money for you. People somewhere else are going hungry if you don’t eat this food.” Flip that and speaking to a Japanese friend, they would think about a community and say, “Think about the farmer who has put this all together. We can’t waste this food. Think about who we are as a people,” and try to sell the food in those terms. It’s the same outcome that you’re looking for. You want your kid to eat their vegetables or whatever it might be. But a very different way of approaching it—very informed by the cultures in which you are growing up in or living in. I often use that story because I think it reminds people that even for the simplest things, cultural paradigms and norms make such a difference. Do you have other examples of something simple, where it’s just perceived very differently or framed differently in cultures?
Letitia Adu-Ampoma: Yes, I do. I think the example, actually, will probably send compliance officers spiraling—the word “facilitation” sends us all down a spiral. There are some countries where I was dealing with a construction contract. The word “facilitation” was actually meant for an upfront payment to get people to start the work, because people are running businesses, they don’t have the capital, etc., so there was a clause in the contract for that. In contrast, the word “consultancy fee” was then buried somewhere in the contract, and that was actually what was dodgy, because it was going to, let’s just say, some third party nobody could identify had the expertise or anything to do with that. So, all I’m saying is, sometimes, things are turned on their head in different cultures. The facilitation was totally legitimate. The consultancy fee, which might have sounded appropriate in the Western context, was what we needed to be looking at.
Richard Bistrong: What about some other flashpoints? We’ve talked about anti-bribery policy, and I would echo your sentiments in that it’s not a one-size-fits-all challenge or a solution. My former commercial experience with corruption in South America was quite different than in the Middle East, for example. You mentioned transparency laws in the context of the pharmaceutical industry. Are there any other areas of risk that you think, if you had to start somewhere that could be misinterpreted, you might want to look at your X, Y, Z policy for starters?
Letitia Adu-Ampoma: If you’re working across jurisdictions—Western and non-Western emerging markets—I think people don’t realize this, but the area of data privacy is a big one. We’re coming into the realm of where data privacy is aligned with human rights and how that is. I think traditionally, there has been this perception that all experience that—maybe some of the emerging economies are weak on that, but that is changing. There are now multi-layered risks around data privacy which need to be taken into account, because potentially, if you’re not looking at it from a local context lens, that is you’re just looking from a Western, maybe even GDPR lens, you are missing out on some impacts by not taking into account cultural context. An example of that: I know mobile telcos have this thing of lawful intervention or unlawful intervention, so when you have a government or a regulated body which suddenly decides it needs the records, what do you do then?
Nitish Upadhyaya: That’s a really interesting example, and, I think, cultures also view data differently. People’s privacy is also a different cultural construct depending on the government you live in or the country you live in, for example, and I think I see that play a really big role in how folks are framing their conversations. Are there other elements that you’re framing differently when it comes to training, awareness or education aspects, which is a big part of compliance or the compliance programs that we work in? Do you have top tips for being culturally informed or culturally aware in how we’re presenting things over and above the points we discussed previously around not just wholesale replicating things from one country to another?
Letitia Adu-Ampoma: I think my final point on that would be around data and how we interpret data, whether in the context of using data in training examples or generally, when we’re looking at data for the effectiveness of our programs. I always use this random example, but I think it’s very relevant: you’re in London at 1:00 a.m., there’s a red traffic light, and you’re driving on your own. Do you stop? Do a survey of 200 people. How many percent stop? Do the same survey: 1:00 a.m., you’re driving in Lagos at the same time on your own. Do you stop? The survey may result in different parameters. I would suggest that probably, the majority would stop in London, and maybe the numbers would be significantly different in Lagos. Now, people could make some horrible assumptions about not being law abiding in Lagos, but actually, there might be some significant contextual stuff around maybe safety or the environment. And so, at that point in time, 1:00 in the morning, if you’re alone and driving, you don’t stop, whereas in London, different. Also, there’s a camera, and you could get a traffic violation the next day if you pass through that light at 1:00 a.m. You get what I mean? If people sit with their lens, a biased lens, and interpret that data, and then make conclusions on it, and then create compliance programs based on it, you’re going down a whole lane which is totally not the one you need to be going down to change behaviors, because you haven’t understood the problem in the first place. So, you’ve almost got to qualitate the quantitative data in the cultural context.
Nitish Upadhyaya: I couldn’t have asked you to bring out that power of storytelling and understanding the context of the data any better, and I suspect we could pull from you hundreds of stories of these cultural difference and contexts, all of which are helpful in terms of what’s happening on a local level but can steer people wrong when you try to generalize and bring things to a much higher point. I wonder if, Richard, you’ve got some key takeaways for our listeners before we start to wrap up.
[28:05] Key Takeaways
Richard Bistrong: It seems like in the New Year, no matter where we start talking about culture, we’re going to end up hitting data in that conversation—so wonderful to bring that in. And what a terrific example, so thank you, Letitia. I think the one surprise for me and takeaway in this conversation is it’s more than just about rules, policies and procedures—it’s really understanding these local cultures, the demographics, the technology and how people communicate, and with that understanding, you can then put the structures in to drive those outcomes. But that’s a much deeper knowledge of a local culture than just what your compliance team might think, so this is really a story a little bit about cultural blind spots as well and how to mitigate them. Thank you so much, Letitia.
Letitia Adu-Ampoma: You’re welcome.
Nitish Upadhyaya: Before we finish up, I have a final question for you, Letitia, around culture. You have lived in all of these places across the world and interacted with all these cultures, but is there a place you still want to explore—somewhere new that you’re dying to get into?
Letitia Adu-Ampoma: New places to explore? I’m very biased to my home country. I come from Ghana. There is also more to explore in Ghana, whether it’s north, south, east or west. I have done Latin America. I’ve done a lot of Africa and Asia, including China. So, I will stick with home. Home is actually where you learn the lessons. It’s just sometimes, you have to go away to remember and to recognize that you’re learning the lessons at home.
Nitish Upadhyaya: I love that so much. Thank you so much for a fascinating conversation. It’s a great way to kick off the New Year, having a culturally informed mindset. I hope that some of the stories that you’ve been telling will stick in listeners’ minds as they potentially turn over a new leaf, move somewhere different or start to think about how they’re going to enhance their own compliance programs to take into account all of the amazing cultures, people and jurisdictions that are in their multinational enterprises.
Letitia Adu-Ampoma: Thank you. It’s been a pleasure. Really enjoyed the conversation.
Nitish Upadhyaya: Thank you all for tuning in to the latest episode in our Culture & Compliance Chronicles series. For more information about our series and any of the ideas discussed today, take a look at the links in our show notes. You can also subscribe to the series wherever you regularly listen to podcasts, including on Apple and Spotify. Amanda, Richard and I will be back very soon for our next chapter. If you have topics you’d like us to cover or novel perspectives you want everyone else to hear about, get in touch. Thanks again for listening. Have a wonderful day and stay curious.
Show Notes:
The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous (Henrich): https://www.amazon.com/WEIRDest-People-World-Psychologically-Particularly/dp/0374173222
