How to Prepare for Questions in Meetings

If you’re going into a high-stakes discussion like a board meeting or budget session, one way to prepare is to play devil’s advocate. Imagine yourself sitting on the other side of the table. How would you poke holes in the proposal? What questions would you ask? What points would you bring up that might torpedo your request? Once you’ve considered the other side’s point of view, you can come up with ways to counteract or neutralize the attacks. Try sitting in the shoes of the person on the other side before the big meeting. You’ll be ready to defend yourself and your request, making it more likely to be granted. Click to Tweet

When to Hire a Compliance Consultant

For many compliance officers with tight budgets, the thought of getting external help from consultants or technology solutions seems impossible. One way to justify the costs of outside help is to determine how long the project will take you to complete in-house, then juxtapose that to the efficiency of having it done quickly. Let’s say you’ve been tasked with completing a risk assessment, and you believe it will take 100 hours to complete.  Assuming you have other tasks and priorities, that task could take you three months to finish. If you have a professional consultant come in, it could be done in one month or less, which will give you more time to implement the recommendations and controls. By getting the project done by using a dedicated outside source, you can use your time to complete the implementation and get the risk under control more quickly. Click to Tweet

How to Make the Most of My Compliance Conference

When you’re at a conference, do you avoid eye contact with the vendors in the exhibition hall?  Do you try not to engage? Maybe you don’t want to be bothered, or you don’t have budget for whatever they’re selling. When you’re in the exhibit hall, try to speak to each of the vendors that has a product you might use in the future. Why? First, when you see new technology or a vendor offering a service that can make your job easier or more efficient, you can take this information to make a case for the service within your organization.  Second, if you get budget the following year or join a new organization, you can advocate for the technology or service. If you don’t talk to the vendors, you don’t know the help they can offer.  Click to Tweet

What to Name My Company's Whistleblower Hotline

There are many names for whistleblowing hotlines, but depending on your company’s culture, one may be much better than another. Whistleblower hotlines can be called just that, or you may prefer variations such as the ethics helpline, speak-up line, compliance line or team member tip line. Whatever you call it, be sure it matches the culture of your business so it is accepted. Test the name out with people in different regions or with a poll on your internal networking site or intranet. Go with something that most people like and are willing to use. Click to Tweet

How to Improve My PowerPoint Presentations

Too many trainings and presentations suffer from a common problem: too much information on the slides. When the practitioner has lots of information to share, it can be comforting to put everything on the slides. When the practitioner realizes that there is too much information and he or she won’t get through the slides in time, the practitioner skips through the slides during the presentation, leaving the audience frustrated that they didn’t hear the information, and the presenter flustered as he or she tries to finish on time. Instead of putting all of the information in the slides, try adding an appendix to give additional information that you won’t cover in the slides. By telling people that there is an appendix with additional information and then sharing the slides, you’ll be a better presenter while still giving people the information they need. Click to Tweet