We are on a run of some great, informative and incredibly useful books by some super star compliance professionals. A couple of weeks ago Mary Shirley released Level Up. In her book, Mary shared forward-thinking hacks and ideas to improve the effectiveness of your Ethics and Compliance program to build a stronger, winning function, honoring psychological safety. Her manifesto for Living Your Best Compliance life contained carefully curated tips and takeaways for optimum impact and immediate action, at low or no investment, because the typical Compliance Officer is not always flush with funds and tends to make do like a corporate MacGyver.

Next week Adam Balfour’s Ethics and Compliance for Humans will be released. (It is available for presale here.) In his book, Balfour, a well-known corporate compliance expert writes why ethics and compliance departments, HR and business leaders must keep people top of mind when designing and implementing ethics and compliance programs. The human-centric programs Balfour espouses resonate with and are highly relevant to their audiences. They not only consider the human experience, but also protect those who are—or might otherwise be—harmed by wrongdoing. Or as Carsten Tams might say, it’s all about the UX.

I am thrilled to be sitting between two such compliance luminaries with the release of my second children’s book on compliance Speaking Up is Awesome. This is the second in my three-book series about compliance for children. The first Being a Compliance Officer is Awesome was released last December and within its first week was a best-selling book for children on Amazon.com. Both books were published and illustrated by Dinosaur House.

Many years ago, when my daughter was a teenager, I asked her if she knew what a whistleblower was. I told her that when I person raised their hand and spoke up after they saw something wrong, that was being a whistleblower. Her response was “That’s what we call a rat.” I have long thought about her response (and she is long past being a teenager). I have wanted to try and change the narrative for teenagers and I feel like in this book Speaking Up is Awesome I have created a way to do so.

The book is the story of our intrepid crew traveling across the galaxy to Planet Pawtastic Friends, the dog rescue planet. On Planet Pawtastic Friends, dogs receive enrichment training so they can be adopted and move to their Fur-ever homes. In enrichment training, dogs train work with rescue dogs to make them ‘super-adoptable’. On their journey, one of the crew discovers something wrong with the engine but as she is not an engineer, she is worried the ship’s engineers will be mad at her; call her a rat and punish her by not letting her come to Thanksgiving Dinner. But she listens to her gut and decided she must tell the Captain about the problem.

It turns out the problem with the engine was quite serious and her speaking up saved the ship. She listened to her gut and she learned that by doing so, it can pay big dividends when you speak up. Not only did she potentially save the ship, but her suggestion made the spaceship run more efficiently and they were able to go farther by savings on fuel. Her example led the Captain to install an anonymous hotline so that other crew members could make reports of unsafe situations or even make suggestions on how to make the spaceship run better. Everyone on the spaceship learned that speaking up is awesome.

Just like my first book, this new book, Speaking Up is Awesome is aimed for the children, families and friends of compliance professionals. Or perhaps you could take hold of the suggestion of Carsten Tams who said that my first children’s book was an excellent guide for other corporate executives who might not fully understand the role of compliance in an organization. Whoever you might want to purchase my book for; it is designed to change the narrative about how children think about whistleblowers. If we can get a generational change in this dynamic, it will make companies better about doing business in compliance and with greater ethics. Moreover,  it will allow many companies to take their speak up culture to another level.

Kyle Welch, in his seminal work Evidence on the Use of and Efficacy of Internal Reporting Systems found that when companies had a culture of speaking up, they not only sustained material cost savings but they became better run companies. The reason was simple; engaged employees felt safe in raising their hands and speaking up. When they did so with such safety, these companies became better run. It seems straight-forward and Welch’s research affirmed this.

I hope you will check out and purchase a copy of Speaking Up is Awesome and we can all change the narrative for today’s kids. Just imagine a galaxy where kids felt like they could speak up and what it would mean for corporate America when they get into the workforce.

There is yet one more reason to purchase this book. Profits go to Pawtastic Friends, the dogs enrichment center founded by my good friends Michael and Melissa Novelli. They are literally changing dogs lives with enrichment training. Pawtastic Friends is the specified non-profit partner of the Compliance Podcast Network and also check out their podcast, The Paw Talk which appears on the CPN. In this podcast, Mike and Melissa talk about dogs available for adoption and some dogs who have found their fur-ever homes. I hope you will consider a donation to Pawtastic Friends.

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