[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
Hi, everyone, and welcome to a special live episode of Epicast Reacts, where we'll cover the abrupt dismissal of Nestle's CEO over an undisclosed romantic relationship with a direct report. Joining us to share her insights on what ENC leaders can learn from this is Ethisphere Chief Strategy Officer Erica Salmon Burn. Erica, welcome to the show. It's good to see you, as always. Although when it's for Ethicast Reacts, it's not always for a good reason, right?
[00:00:37] Speaker B: That's right. No, Bill and you and I were talking a little bit in the prep for this one that when we first started, saw this story break, you know, we had very similar reactions, which is another CEO behaving badly. Not really. You know, this. This isn't in our wheelhouse. But the more we thought about the story, read about the story, including tracing some of the journalism that was happening in Switzerland over the course of the summer. There's a lot to this story, and I'm happy to have the chance to try to unpack it together.
[00:01:04] Speaker A: There is a lot. So I've got some background. I'm going to get through it, and I promise I'll be as quick as I can. But there's a lot to go through, so stick with me. Here we go. So, on September 1st, Nestle, the world's largest food company, announced the immediate dismissal of CEO Laurent Frex following an investigation into an undisclosed dramatic relationship between Frex and a direct subordinate. Nationalist Board of Directors has appointed Philip Navratil as CEO. Navratil has worked at Nestle since 2001 and was previously CEO of Nestle Nespresso. Now Frex is 63 and spent nearly 30 years at Nestle. His downfall began with reports this spring to the company's Speak up platform. It's actually called Speak up, complaining of an inappropriate romantic relationship between Frax and one of his direct reports. And this includes allegations of favoritism. Frax and the report denied that they were having an affair and an investig, and the internal investigation proved inconclusive.
This is where it gets interesting. On July 27, inside parade plots, a Swiss financial news site, published an article publicly alleging that Rex was having an affair with his vice president of marketing, insinuating that her romantic relationship with Frex and her promotion to VP by Frex might have been linked.
Following this, as well as additional reports of misconduct that apparently include a letter sent directly to Nestle Chairman Paul Bulka, Nestle hired outside counsel to investigate. The investigation proved ample evidence that Frex and the report, who left the company shortly after the Inside Parade class article broke were in fact romantically linked. Nestle's board swiftly dismissed Rex after that.
Paul Boelcke has stated in the official PR piece from Nestle, quote, this was a necessary decision. Nestle's values and governance are strong foundations of our company. I thank Laurent for his years of service at Nestle. End quote. Okay, Erica, that's the background. Are you ready for my question?
[00:02:55] Speaker B: I'm ready for your questions, Bill. Let's do this.
[00:02:58] Speaker A: So the first one is about CEOs behaving badly. Nestle joins a long list of companies, including astronomer Kohl's and BP, that have all lost their CEOs recently for conducting an improper romantic relationship at work and failing to disclose it properly. What does this episode say about why we have conflicts of interest disclosures in the first place? And why does it seem like so many CEOs have a problem following them?
[00:03:22] Speaker B: Yeah.
So, Bill, once more for the people in the back. A conflict of interest is a situation where you appear to put your personal interests or the personal benefit of people to whom you are connected ahead of the interests of the company.
And you and I know, Bill, from all of the years that we've been doing this work, that there is no such thing as. Well, I shouldn't say there's no such thing as an unmitigatable conflict. But the challenge with conflicts does not come with having the conflict. The challenge with conflicts comes with deliberately deciding not to disclose the conflict. Right. So here we had a situation where you've got the CEO, very significantly powerful individual inside of a very large organization who is seen to be favoring the person with whom he is involved in a romantic relationship. And they have chosen not to follow the company's disclosure protocols and tell the company about this romantic relationship such that the company could do its best to mitigate those kinds of an impact. And we have these disclosure regulations because we are all human. And without disclosure, we can't know that we're. That the decisions that are being made by the people around us are being made for the best interests of the company. Instead, we can suspect when we are aware of the fact that our friend, the VP of Marketing, is having a relationship with the CEO. Because you cannot tell me that people inside the company did not know this. She transferred to their Swiss headquarters from, from Istanbul during the course of this relationship. Like, the reporting makes it pretty clear that this was. This was not something that people were not aware of.
So you tell me, Bill, you're sitting in that meeting and Everything this woman says is taken as gospel. Every idea that she comes up with is seen as the greatest idea. I don't know, maybe she's taking other people's work and presenting it as her own. It doesn't matter.
Everything she does is going to the perceptions of. Everything she does. The perceptions of, of, of, you know, in any of these situations, it's all going to be colored by everybody's knowledge of the relationship that they have with the most important person at the company. And we are hardwired as people, as you and I have talked about in the past, Bill. It's, you know, we wrote about it in, at the Term magazine. The neuroscience tells us that we are constantly on the lookout for signs that, that, that we are not in an environment where everyone is treated the same. Right. We are hardwired to look for indications that the, that organizational justice is not a paramount consideration for the organization.
So again, as I said, you know, when I started answering this question, once more for the people in the back, having a conflict is not by itself a problem. Failing to disclose a conflict is by itself a problem. Because at the end of the day, we're trying to create an environment where people believe that you as an employee of the company are putting the best interests of the company ahead of whatever relationships you might have at work. That's it. That's it. Now, would a robust conflicts of interest disclosure process have prevented this from happening? No, because it looks like Nestle had one. Right. This is not a process problem. But we have, I want to ground all of us in the why we have this in the first place. And the reason we have it in the first place is so that people are not alleging favoritism.
Right. That's one of the things that was in the reporting on this, in the Speak up complaint, there were allegations that the CEO was favored, was. Was giving favorable treatment to this person with whom he had a relationship. And it's a very reasonable thing for people to assume because the company didn't know enough to be able to mitigate the connection between these two folks.
[00:07:06] Speaker A: Yeah, for sure. And the thing is I don't, you and I don't have an inside look at what was going on within Nestle. But some of the reporting that came out, especially the inside Parade Plats piece which we will have linked in this episode and to be fair, it's a bit salacious. More like a high end, it reads like a high end tattle blog than actual like hardcore reporting. Like the Wall Street Journal's reporting is much more Evenhanded, I'd say. But in it, it does kind of talk about and sort of suggest that there were kind of, you know, palace intrigues going on in which, in which, you know, the relationship actually played like a tactical aspect and that, you know, first people were giving each other support during times of executive struggle. So whether or not that's true, the mere appearance of that, though, to your point, it undermines the psychological safety of the entire organization at the highest level. And that's why it's such an important reason to look at these things. And as we say, people are going to people. Right. This does not look like it's a process problem. It's a people problem. But when we talk about the process, though, I want to move on to my second question, which is in Nestle's code of Conduct, one of its golden rules is, quote, speak up if we suspect something is not right, end quote. Now, if you go through their code of conduct, there is a QR code to a Speak up platform on nearly every single page of that document. And before the code even gets into what you might speak up about, it explains why it's important to speak up, how to Speak up, and specifically calls out its anti retaliation protections for those who do Speak Up. Right. So it's a really, they, they do not hide the Speak up aspect whatsoever if you go to their website. Nestle is a gargantuan organization. It only takes three clicks when you go from Nestle's website to get to the speaker thing. So you don't have to go on a long journey to find it. It's not particularly hidden or anything like that. It's pretty, it's pretty out in the open. So with all that said, Erica, what are your thoughts on how well the Speak up program did its job here and what are we to take away from this particular instance when we think about Speak up programs in general?
[00:08:56] Speaker B: Yeah, so the Speak up process itself is clearly something that, that, that at least someone at Nestle felt comfortable using potentially on multiple occasions. Right. This was a situation where there was the original allegation that was made. It was looked into. And I want to talk for a second about what might have gone wrong with that first investigation such that it was inconclusive.
But, you know, whoever it was that was concerned about this did not let it go. And they were comfortable continuing to press the issue because they knew what they were watching was against company values and against the company CO code. So from a process perspective, I would say the Speak up side of things worked exceptionally well, and it was clearly something that people inside of Nestle were comfortable using the investigation piece. You know, Bill, I want to touch on just for a second because there was that, that when the, when the first allegation came forward, there was an investigation that was conducted. Now, I want to be really honest with our listeners. Investigating allegations against the CEO is very tricky, right? Because at the end of the day, the people doing that investigation report to the CEO. And so if the CEO wants to obfuscate, if the CEO doesn't want to cooperate, if the CEO wants to bald face, lie to investigators, there's not a whole lot that that internal investigation team can do in those circumstances. Right. They can do their very best. And it is interesting to me that they did not say that the investigation was unsubstantiated. Right. Which is a different, different classification. They said it was inconclusive.
[00:10:31] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:10:31] Speaker B: So what that says to me is we here, we had a situation where we had a leader, we had a chief executive who decided that they would try to find a way to get themselves out of this situation by just, you know, stonewalling the whole investigation, right? Not, not really cooperating with the investigation. And so it wasn't until the board got involved. And the board is ultimately the CEO's boss, right? So the board gets involved, the board hires outside counsel.
Outside counsel, it sounds like from the Wall Street Journal's reporting. And again, to emphasize guys like Bill and I are, we are spitballing off of public information, right? We are, we are just going off of what we are reading in the public reporting here. But the Wall Street Journal's piece said that the external investigation, the law firm that the board hired, accessed the CEO's private cell phone and some other things. And I'm guessing based on the way the story is drafted, that that was a different level of access compared to the first internal investigation. Right. It's very hard to demand your boss's cell phone. It's a different story when the board's outside counselor comes in and says, you know, you need to turn everything over. And so, um, you know, that, that is the, the point at which things really started to, you know, come to light based on what we're reading in the public reporting. And so ultimately that investigations process worked too. So we had two processes that worked, but just with some challenges along the way.
[00:12:06] Speaker A: When we speak about those challenges, you know, something I like to spend a moment on is talking about that parade plots coverage, Right? Because it's, it's seems like from what I was reading, the Timeline looks like they had the initial Speak up report. There was the initial investigation. All right. And things look like they may have been simmering down because the initial report was in the spring of this year.
[00:12:24] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:12:25] Speaker A: July on July 27th is when parade Plots broke its own story. And then there appeared to have been the additional, the additional outside external investigation was prompted by that rather embarrassing media coverage. Right.
[00:12:38] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:12:39] Speaker A: So from a, from a journalistic perspective. Right. When you look at that story, that story has all the hallmarks of somebody within Nestle who wasn't happy that the initial investigation didn't yield the expected results and then leaked a very salacious story to the press. Right. Stories like this don't leak by people who are happy with things. They leak because people are trying to take a non standard way to affect radical change. Right. And use it to address a grievance or to address a perceived injustice. Right. That's usually where all leaks come from.
[00:13:08] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:13:09] Speaker A: So when you see a leader like raging against leaks in the organization, it's not about the leaks, it's about the leadership. Right. Close parentheses.
But, but you know, you know, having said that though, Eric, I mean, you make a really good point about that initial or the initial investigation. It can only go so far necessarily. Right. Until, until the board actually, you know, brings in additional firepower to really bring that, bring the facts to bear. And when you look at commentary around the initial recovery, initial coverage on this, there is a handy narrative that presents itself that may not necessarily be fair to Nestle, which is that there is the initial, initial investigation. Nothing happened of it. Maybe a cover up, maybe not. And they're only when they got embarrassment public did they really do a full investigation of it. And I'm not sure that's really a fair thing.
I think that may be, you know, presuming villainy where there is none.
[00:14:01] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, no, Bill, I, I agree. I mean, I, I think, you know, having, having been around a lot of, of organizations over the years and watching what happens when the company hires outside counsel at the direction of the board and just how that changes the narrative of the investigation process, how it changes potentially access what investigators are able to look at, the people they're able to talk to, the documents they're able, or the, you know, the correspondence they're able to review, it does become a very different thing. And so, you know, my suspicion is that this, this hotline call came in.
Certainly if I was the chief compliance officer on the receiving end of that call at Nestle, I would have had a, this is what we drill for moment like oh crap.
Because every organization has a way that they escalate, you know, allegations that involve leadership. And we don't know exactly what the timing was on the letter that went to the chair of the board talking about these allegations. But you know, what we have here clearly is a situation where people inside of the company were not going to let this drop and they were going to go outside of the organization if they had to. That's my suspicion. The level of reporting that the, the, the Swiss blog site had was just, you know, obviously they had some connection points inside business. They had a lot of history, they had a lot of, you know, different pieces of information on kind of who had worked for whom, when and where they had worked and things like that. So, and that actually brings up another point, Bill, that I wanted to make in the context of the story, which is, you know, understanding the primary reasons that employees who raise a concern are dissatisfied with the process. Because most, more often than not, when someone goes outside an organization, outside is not their first step. Right? They try to raise things internally. We even see this in the data that the SEC has shared over the years on whistleblower complaints that have come into the Dodd Frank whistleblower office. They, they track if you've raised things internally before you come to the office and the vast majority of employees have, it's north of 85% year after year after year of employees saying yes, I tried to raise this internally, no one would listen to me. And so I think you have a similar sort of a fact pattern here where, you know, things were raised internally, they were looked into to the extent that the team was capable of looking into them. And then we, you know, we sort of hit a wall, right? You hit a cooperation wall, you have your suspicions, you believe, you know, you understand what's happening, but you can't, you know, kind of get across that final threshold to come up with a disciplinary recommendation.
So what we see in our data when we do culture surveys for companies here at Ethisphere is the primary reasons that someone does, is not satisfied with the outcome of the investigation is either they weren't informed of what had happened or the outcome didn't seem fair. Right. And so it's again that sense that, that bone deep, reptilian brain, you know, sense of organizational justice where we are all constantly scanning, you know, at a subconscious level for indications that we're not being treated the same as everybody else. And so, you know, making sure as you think about your follow up process, your close process as you think about the risk that some of this stuff is going to le your organization, thinking about the way that you close a process is going to be a piece of the puzzle for the organizations that are out there listening to you and I talk about this and thinking to yourselves, okay, well, you know, what are my key takeaways? What are my pragmatic takeaways from this one? It's a great fact pattern, right. If you want to talk to your employees about why it matters to disclose conflicts. But two, really dig into what you know about how people feel about the process of raising concerns. Because in this scenario, we definitely see a situation where someone chose to go outside.
[00:17:59] Speaker A: Yeah, for sure. For sure. Yeah. And before we move on to the next question, just to tie this off, I mean, lest it look like we're having fun punching at Nestle, we're really not. I mean, we do episodes. No, no, no. Yeah, very much. Because these are contextually relevant and there's something to learn. And I think, you know, over the course of this last year, Erica, you and I have done three epicast reacts around CEOs that lost their job over improperly disclosed romantic relationships at work. And in one of those cases, it was clear that the company did not seem to have a pretty robust system involved for speaking up or for addressing issues like this. In another case, the company did have a robust program and it worked really well, moved quickly and it got, it did the prop. The program did what it was supposed to do. And in this case and Nestle, it really looks like this, this is the case of the program did what it's supposed to do far, far, far, far more than it didn't. It looks like they have a program, they put a lot of effort into it and communicating it and socializing it. And when it happened, they didn't, you know, they, they, they, they acted. And honestly, the time horizon on this entire thing from start to finish appears to be fairly short in the grand scheme. This is not linger for enormous period of time. So. Yeah, but this brings me to my next question, which is about, you know, Nestle made sure to note in its official announcement that FREX was dismissed without a severance package. And again, like a lot of people in comment sections around the world, merely presume he left with a golden parachute. He did not. Rex left with with no severance package whatsoever.
And in some of the subsequent reporting around this, there have been corporate governance experts who've been quoted as saying this seems like a kind of unusual step, but is it really? Considering we have Such a clear breach of the company's code of conduct.
[00:19:36] Speaker B: Yeah, no, this was, this is a clear breach situation, Bill. And, and I will never present myself as an expert on Swiss contracts law.
That is well outside of my wheelhouse. But you know, most, most leadership team employment agreements that I have seen around the globe have a clause for, for, for, for cause terminations. Right? And, and if it's a for cause termination, you don't walk with some sort of a massive package. Instead you leave because you violated company policy or engaged in other inappropriate or improper behavior. And so, you know, we're not going to be privy to what Frex's employment agreement said. At least, you know, not unless somebody sends it to a Swiss blogger. And you and I then, you know, are already following the team there and come across it. But, but, you know, we're not going to come, we're not going to be privy to those details. But this is a clear situation where an investigation duly conducted by the board, authorized by the CEO's boss, found evidence of inappropriate behavior that was not only not disclosed, but deliberately obfuscated. And any board worth their salt is going to show that CEO the door and hold on to every penny of shareholder value as they do so.
[00:20:57] Speaker A: Yeah. And even if we're not talking CEOs, even if it's just been somebody who, it was just their first week on the job, they're reality is that when you look at their code of conduct, when you look at how it's worded, this is a clear violation. And Frex had been in the company for more or less his entire career. He helped to craft this very code that he then broke. So it's not just a clear violation. It is, it is, it's, it's a very deep violation because it's, it's when you, when you're breaking the rules that you yourself have created, that is more than just a personal transgression. You've transgressed upon everybody who you, you transgress on everybody when you break any rule. But it's especially resonant when you do it against rules that you yourself have created.
[00:21:36] Speaker B: But Bill, you know, again, I mean, I, I, and I promise to everybody listening, this will be my last time beating the organizational justice amygdala brain horse. But, but, but Bill, that's exactly why this situation, I think, has caused the amount of interest that it has. It's why the astronomer CEO situation caused the amount of interest that it has. Right? When you have a situation where you have people in leadership who are deliberately Showing through their behavior that they believe there is one set of rules for everybody else and a different set of rules for them. And in this case, as you pointed out, right, the, this Frax signed this coat like the original, you know, up until his departure, his, the, the face that welcomed you to the code of conduct was his, right? The fact that he basically looked at Nestle employees and was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, those are for you guys.
This is for me. And this is for me is I can do whatever the heck I want to and you can't question me. Right? That's, that's where our, you know, sense of, of, of, of aggrieved annoyance, that's the genesis of it. Right? That's why we all, you know, follow these stories, because we have a suspicion that the rules for the folks at the top are different than the rules for the rest of us. And you and I know from the work we do, Bill, that A, that's incredibly corrosive for corporate culture and people's willingness to raise their hand and B, it shouldn't be true. I'm not going to say in places it isn't, but in this case it's obvious it wasn't true. Right. As soon as the, it's. It's looking at the timing of all of this.
The board met over the weekend and fired the CEO, Right. Like, they moved fast on this and, and good for them.
[00:23:18] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. Well, my next question is about stock performance.
The reporting around Forex is quick to point out that the company's poor stock performance under his CEO was, was, was certainly a factor. In fact, his successor lost his job over poor stock performance in 2024. Frex had only been on the job for a year.
So Frex may not have lasted long in this role regardless. But that does bring up the challenge of holding high performers accountable for misconduct. So, Erica, in your experience, when a company refuses to hold its top performers accountable for breaking the rules, what does it say about the overall health of the organization? And what advice do you have for ENC leaders who are stuck with the unwelcome task of holding superstars accountable when they cross the line?
[00:24:02] Speaker B: Yeah, we see this a lot, don't we, Bill? I mean, you know, we've all heard stories, we've all seen situations where you have, you know, the high performing salesperson who's allowed to be a bully and to, you know, be nasty to co workers because of the revenue numbers that they hit.
And this is really the nub of the work that so many folks in the space are doing on a day to day basis, which is twofold, right. One is convincing leaders that how somebody does something is as important as if they do it and convincing employees that when they say how matters as much as if they mean it. Right? And that is ongoing work. Because we, you know, we see too many examples of places where the, you know, you go in with the results of the substantiated investigation and the local management team is like, but they're the, you know, they're responsible for 40% of our revenue. It's like, okay, well you can choose, right? Is 40% of the revenue more important than an 80% higher turnover? Because nobody wants to work with this person because they're a, they're a jerk, right? And we've got demonstrated examples of all of the ways in which they've been a jerk. And you know, you are choosing short, you're deliberately choosing short term gain over preserving a culture that, where people are comfortable raising their hand and are treated fairly and with respect when they do so. So it is without question where the rubber meets the road. And what it takes is, it takes leadership teams at all levels who are looking at things with a long term perspective and asking themselves what is the cost of turning a, turning a blind eye on this behavior and what is the cost if I don't?
And you know, the ones who are willing to have that conversation are going to choose to address the behavior because the compounding costs of inappropriate activities are substantial. You know, there's one of the pieces that we read as part of the preparation for this conversation. Bill did an analysis of the financial performance of every business unit at Nestle that, that, that he's ever been in charge of. Right. So they went back through his 30 year career at Nestle once he was in a leadership position and, and looked at the financial performance of every part of, of, of every business unit he's been responsible for, for, and they all underperformed.
And they also, the same piece was also talking about his patterns of behavior.
And so, you know, this, this situation with this relationship was not the first time that he was involved with someone that he worked with, according to the public reporting.
And so I would encourage all of our listeners to think about the extent to which some of that poor financial performance was tied to the culture that he created. Right. And what do you need to do to help people understand that at the end of the day how you do something matters as much as if you do it, because how is the thing that is sustainable over time?
You know, if, is if is a moment in time. So that's the, you know, that's the difference between long term and short term thinking.
[00:27:12] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. And I'll just, I'll just flip this around as well because we've been talking about this very much from a harm reduction perspective or a misconduct A leads to no harm result B. But if you look at the other way, and that makes its own case for why you shouldn't do these things, why you should prevent these things going the other way, when you create a culture that exalts and practices and advances highly ethical behavior, you will over perform. You will outperform. I'm going to point again to the five year ethics premium, which is my very favorite piece of information in this entire space because it is proof positive that strong ethics is indeed good business as a tagline for the show for a reason.
And that ethics premium points to it. You get better innovation, you get better talent attraction, talent retention, you get better clients, you get stronger supply chain. They all follow. When you, when you pursue the ethical excellence, good things follow. So it's not just a matter of, oh, you know, we can't afford to enforce strong ethical behavior for risk of losing an expedient gain.
This is a long term business. This is a long term prospect. And if you don't, if you don't believe us, look at the ethics premium. It does not lie. It does. It just doesn't.
So I have one more question for you, Erica.
This is about leadership. So the new CEO Navratil is assuming command of a company with reports of executive power struggles, a frustrated investor base, stunted product innovation, and public criticism around a host of issues that include things like child labor, product contamination and more. Now, Nestle is famous for appointing lifers as its chief executives and Nevada was one.
At times like this, when you have a company that's, that's in a, facing turmoil, frankly, long term and short term turmoil, what is the strength of looking inward for new leadership and what is the risk?
[00:29:05] Speaker B: Yeah, you know, Bill, I think, I mean, look, first off, the board had to move quickly upon, you know, the receipt of the, of the outside law firm's findings.
As you mentioned, Rex had been in his role for just about a year. So this was yet another very quick CEO turnover. So I understand why the board was unwilling to say this person's just going to be an interim. Right? They had to, they had to look quickly.
Hopefully because of the relatively quick turnaround on the, on the, the, on the outbound CEO, the board was operating from a good succession planning situation that, you know, they had, they had thought about who the successor to FREX would be, they had already identified some of the, of who those people might be inside the organization.
And so they were able to then turn and tap the person, even though they were tapping them far sooner than they otherwise would have planned to do so. So, you know, inherently speaking, looking inside an organization, that's the easiest way to succession plan. And a good board is constantly succession planning for their CEO because you never know what's going to happen. So understanding what your bench looks like, understanding what your talent pool looks like, and knowing whether you don't have anybody who is capable of stepping into the CEO shoes on relatively short notice, and therefore you should start to think about what an outside search might look like.
You always, always, always as a member of a board, want to know that if you wake up on a Saturday morning and you have a vacancy in your CEO seat, you know who's going to step into that seat. Now, look, maybe as we have seen over the years, that person is going to be somebody who's stepping off the board and into the CEO seat on an interim basis while they search for an outside CEO. But here, my very strong suspicion is that the board had a succession planning process they had already gone through in 2024 and in 2023, and they refreshed it and they asked the neck, the person who was at the top of that list to step into the role.
Now we're going to see what he's capable of as a consumer. I think Nespresso is great. So, you know, maybe that, maybe that bodes well, but, you know, he does definitely have a set of cultural challenges ahead of him.
I do think the way they have handled the situation is a good story. I hope they're telling that good story far and wide inside the organization. I hope that they are talking about the commitment to Nestle's values, they're talking about the way the process worked, that really they are taking this as an opportunity to celebrate the employees who saw what was wrong and said something right. That's exactly what we asked of them.
[00:31:55] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah, for sure.
Well, whenever we do stories like this and episodes like this, Erica, the first, whenever we decide, you know, you and I talk like, you know, we're going to do this episode, my first reaction is, is I can't wait to ask Eric all these questions. And I just love coming with all the questions. So you've been very, very patient with me as I've kind of hit you with a whole bunch and We've covered an awful lot of ground. But before we sign off, is there anything else that you'd like to talk about or any other aspect of this that, that, that bring forth some insights you'd like to share with the NC audience?
[00:32:23] Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, I, I think that if I were, if I were inside of the, of really any organization reading this particular fact pattern, there's a couple of pieces that really stood out to me that I would encourage everyone listening to you, to you and I talk, Bill, to, to take into consideration one. But, and if I have to pick just one of them because we've covered a lot of them already in the course of this conversation, the one that I would pick on is something that came up in, and I am not going to try to pronounce the name of the blog, the one the inside.
Did we just do. Is that a line patter pattern?
[00:32:57] Speaker A: Inside parade plots?
[00:32:58] Speaker B: Okay, Inside parade plots.
There was a, there was a comment in that piece about the fact that potentially some, some bad things being said about Frax got back to him via his girlfriend who was sitting in other meetings.
And so I would ask yourself, where are you inside of your organizations potentially seeing that same sort of palace intrigue, that same sort of side taking that same sort of back channeling and then go and just spend some time with those parts of your business. Because my main takeaway in this one is everybody knew, right?
They understood what was going on, they attached themselves to various aspects of the power dynamic and they wrote it as far as they could. And so, you know, to the extent you think that might be happening inside your organization, it's a great time, right? We're in September. Hop on a plane, go see some people, spend some time, you know, do some training while you're there, have an open door, invite people to come and chat with you and just see the extent to which you've got some of these same sort of threads potentially happening inside your organization so you can get out in front of them and, and handle the message. Because at the end of the day, this is not what Nestle wanted, right? To be clear, like, nobody wants you and I reacting to their situation, Bill. It's, it's not, you know, it's, it's, it's generally speaking, not a great day for the company in the story when you and I are like, yes, let's go live with this one.
So let's all take a moment and take a beat and think about which pieces of the fact pattern could apply to our organizations. And you know, don't ask yourself, could it happen here? Right? Ask yourself, how could it happen here? That's the power of using these kinds of scenarios to make our own programs better.
[00:34:57] Speaker A: Well, Erica, I could not agree more. So thank you once again for coming on the show to cover this.
As you mentioned, this story is kind of blowing up news feeds all over the place, so it's always helpful to use these moments not to point and jeer, but more importantly to provide learning opportunities for everyone in the business integrity space. So once again, thank you so much for lending your insights to us.
[00:35:14] Speaker B: Bill 100% my pleasure. And may it be a long time before you and I have to do another one of these.
[00:35:21] Speaker A: Life is better when you and I are bored, but you and I both know it's not going to go that way. So yeah, that's true. Everyone, thank you very much for hanging with us for this episode. We sure appreciate it. For plenty of free ethics and compliance resources on conflicts of interest, speak up culture, values based leadership, and much, much more, please visit the Ethisphere resource
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