For this Friday’s installment of the October compliance Classic Monster Movie fest, I combine two installments in the 1940s reimaging of the 1932 classic; The Mummy’s Tomb and The Mummy’s Ghost. I combine them both as they are essentially sequential follow-ons to the 1940 film The Mummy’s Hand.

The Mummy’s Tomb picks up the story thirty years after the conclusion of the previous film. It begins with Steve Banning reciting the story of Kharis to his family and evening guests one night. He relates the destruction of the creature, at the tombs back in Egypt. However, surviving their supposed demise, Andoheb explains the legend of Kharis, (now played by Lon Chaney, Jr.) to his follower, Mehemet Bey. Andoheb passes on instructions for the use of the tana leaves and assigning the task of terminating the remaining members of the Banning Expedition and their descendants. Bey and Kharis leave Egypt for the journey to the United States to fulfill their destiny, which they largely accomplish, killing nearly everyone involved in the original expedition. 

The Mummy’s Ghost picks up with Andoheb, the aging High Priest, summoning Yousef Bey to the Temple of Arkam to pass on the duties of High Priest. He explains the legend of Kharis to Bey and informs Bey that Kharis still lives and that Yousef’s mission is to retrieve Kharis and the body of Ananka and return them to their rightful resting place in Egypt. Back in Mapleton, Massachusetts, where the last Mummy rampage occurred and where Kharis is located, a student, Tom Hervey, meets up with his girlfriend Amina Mansori, a beautiful woman of Egyptian descent. She will become the immortal love interest of Kharis.

Kharis senses Amina as the carrier of Ananka’s soul and kidnaps her. Tom tries to rescue her but is fought off by Kharis. Unfortunately, Amina ages to become the same vintage as Kharis as he lumbers off with her where they sink into quicksand in a swamp. Tom’s last anguished sight of Amina is that of a 3,000-year-old Egyptian Princess as Kharis and Ananka disappear under the water, united in death.

What is the connection of compliance and these two installments in the Mummy oeuvre? It is professional development (don’t worry – it will be clear by the end). My good friend Corina Manea wrote a great post yesterday over on Spin Sucks, entitled “How to Build Your Professional Development Plan for Habit”, which I have purloined and adapted for the compliance professional. There are only eight working weeks left in the year. What have you achieved against the professional development goals you set in January? It is very easy to stuck in the details of our day job.

Too often your learning goals suffer because you are too busy or too tired to even think about it. Or because you have no time and have other obligations. Yet there is no job, particularly the compliance profession, in which you can function if you do not focus and invest in your professional development now. One of the clear themes of this year’s SCCE 2017 Compliance and Ethics Institute (CEI) was the need for professional development.

Professional Development is a Must for Every Compliance Professional

I want you to look around…really look around you. Artificial intelligence (AI) is gaining ground and will be a part of the compliance practice in a very short time. Can you read a spreadsheet? If not, you probably will not ever be a CCO.

Blockchain has been called the new internet and will certainly be one of the most important tools in compliance down the road. Your work must be measured but you have no idea how to read the data in front of you. Professional development is a must for every compliance professional no matter how much – or how little – experience you have. Things are moving much more quickly and it is hard to keep up with technology, not to mention stay ahead of trends. Which brings me back to investing in your professional development now, as opposed to later.

Treat Professional Development as a Client

The key insight is that as a compliance professional, you must treat your professional development as if it were a client. This means to give it the same attention, dedication, and passion you have for your day-to-day work. In time and with hard work (there is no way around that), it will pay off. Take your career into your own hands and invest in your professional development. It starts with a plan, one that will help you create the habit. Your plan should include, at a minimum:

• How much time per day you will spend learning;
• The top five publications, blogs, or online magazines you want to read every day;
• Online courses you want to take in the next three months; and
• The top three conferences you want to attend next year.

Do not forget to include digital networking, as well. Once you have your plan in place, it’s time to split each goal into monthly and weekly tasks. Schedule a meeting with yourself at the end of each week – actually put it on your calendar – to review your progress, see what worked and what did not work for your development and adjust for the following week. Apply the same strategy at the end of each month and quarter. Write down your weekly and monthly results and progress. There is no bigger motivator than getting results from your efforts. Do not treat it lightly; write it down; all of it and then commit to it. 

How can you achieve all of this? A good way to start would be to join me next week for my inaugural Doing Compliance Master Class Series. You a trusted partner who delivers relevant content, which can be used to solve a wide variety of issues, even those outside the anti-corruption compliance space. This series delivers timely topical information you can trust, is relevant to the compliance business function, and comes at a reasonable cost.  As the Compliance Evangelist, I bring a unique insight into what many companies have done right and many have done not so well over the years. This professional experience enables me to put together a unique training program for any professional who wants to succeed in compliance. For more information, check out Doing Compliance Master Class Series. 

The lesson from the two Mummy movies that opened this piece are that lifelong learning is something you must engage in as a compliance practitioner. The compliance world will not sit still and neither should you. Manea was right, you must treat your professional development with the same seriousness that you treat your internal customers and clients; i.e. your employees. Set out a plan, follow it, measure your actual progress against the plan and adjust as needed.

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