Crisis creates opportunity

The unexpected can turn a case into a crisis. I was involved in running a homicide trial where two brothers were charged with kidnapping and murdering the manager of a duty free warehouse and burying his body in a grave they dug for him a month earlier. The brother who drew a map showing the remote location of the grave site and confessed, pleaded guilty at the start of the trial. This was completely unexpected by everyone; even his own lawyer. This left us with a weakened case against the other brother; who we knew was the principal killer.

The judge granted us 24 hours to re-organise our case. As we sat in the Crown Solicitors office minutes later we knew we had to find evidence against the one remaining, or there was a good chance he would walk free.

That evening I visited a friend of the accused (I’ll call him John) who we were calling to give minor evidence. I had a gut feeling he knew more than he was letting on. After answering my door knock John said; “I wondered when you would come to see me – you better come upstairs”.

It turned out that John visited his friend at Mt Eden prison two days before. The accused confided in him that he strangled the victim and he was going to get away with it because his brother was pleading guilty so that his video-taped confession is not played to the jury. John provided a written statement that night and testified because of the arrogance of his ‘friend’ thinking he would get away with it. I asked John why he had not contacted police before my visit. He said he thought we had enough evidence to convict without his further testimony.

John withstood strong cross examination and gave compelling evidence which contributed to the real killer being held accountable. The unexpected guilty plea provided us the opportunity to critically examine our case and assess how it could be strengthened. John’s full testimony may well have made the difference.   DP

Culture eats Strategy every time

Culture beats strategy hands down.

Have you ever wondered why after going through all the machinations of strategic planning with a facilitator and writing a strategic plan - none (or only part) of it works?

How has this happened? What went wrong? Why could we not follow the plan?  In 99% of the cases it's because culture eats strategy any day.

You can have the best cyber security process, risk management profiles that businesses are able to invent, but how do you prevent a worker from writing their password on the notepad so that an IT specialist can fix a desktop issue.

In the health and safety field, your plan dictates that if a person is sick they don't come to work to prevent the spread of the virus.  How then do you prevent the manager from coming to work with the flu because he or she is supposedly indispensable?

How do you prevent staff thefts when the CEO takes a surplus computer home for the rumpus room?

It all starts at the top.  If your board and CEO don't practice what they preach then how are you expecting people to act further down reporting lines.

Board members and executive must live, eat, drink and sleep the strategy in order to make it work. If they leave it up to chance then the prevailing culture will thrash strategy every time. 

This is where ongoing planning and change management practices must be implemented. 

1.       Everyone must know what the strategy is and how it relates to their work life

2.       There must be clear directions around expected behavioural changes and accountability           for those

3.       Board and executive members must live, breathe and sleep the strategy every waking                 moment

Culture and strategies must be aligned full stop! Only then will culture and strategy be the best of friends. 

Richard Middleton

A Conflict of Interest? Or A Duty of Confidentiality?

Recently an MBIE investigator told me that I couldn't ply my trade due to a conflict of interest between them and a role that I had undertaken over a year previously.

In 2015/16 I undertook contract work for the NZ Companies Office. It involved managing an Integrity Unit and it’s staff. From time to time we would have interactions with other regulators from across MBIE.

Whilst in that role I was unable to play my trade as a private investigator due to time frames.

Veritas Investigations Ltd (VI) was set up in 2016 with a partnership between Dave Pizzini and I, we started our work in April 2017.

The MBIE investigator told me that I had provided data to him in my role with the Companies Office which related to a current client of VI. I was unable to remember any such interactions with the investigator relating to the client.

Prior to undertaking any work for this client I had declared my previous role with the Companies Office to them. They were comfortable with my professionalism and integrity and we continued to engage. 

The MBIE investigator and I entered into an email conversation about his perception of my conflict of interest.

I considered any conflict of interest was between myself and my client. I had declared my previous work to the client. I struggled to see a conflict of interest in this situation.

In my mind the MBIE investigator was confusing conflict of interest with duty of confidentiality. Emailing the investigator I told him that I had a duty of confidentiality to the Companies Office relating to my work there. In the same way I had a duty of confidentiality to my client not to disclose client information to him.

Integrity means everything o me.  Maintaining the duty of confidentiality both ways is paramount to that and my continued professionalism in this field and my life in general.