Have Lewis present at your next conference or retreat.
An experienced and engaging speaker, author of Rules – A Guide to drafting Respectful Policies and Directives and a Certified Virtual Trainer through eSpeakers, Lewis delivers a meaningful message to large and small audiences alike.
Below are examples of his signature talks.
“I Love My Organization’s Policies,” said no one.
Often organizations claim to hold “respect for others” as a core value, but when you look at their rules documents, the story is different. Whether they call them “policies,” “terms and conditions,” or simply “guidelines,” most of these rules sound like they were written by angry parents talking to naughty children.
Getting engagement under those conditions is an uphill battle. Compliance will improve when your rules sound positive and helpful. Your policies reflect your corporate culture. In this eye-opening session, Lewis shows you how to change the conversation around rules in your organization.
Attendees will gain a new perspective on the purpose of policy writing in the organization, including the following takeaways:
- Policies and compliance done right are a collaborative effort, not a power struggle
- Many policies unintentionally reveal the organization’s internal problems
We need to change the rule-making dynamic from Parent/Child to Adult/Adult, so that SMEs are seen as experts rather than enforcers
Values-based Policies
It’s no secret that corporate policies are a hard sell in many organizations. Some people spend an inordinate amount of time justifying their policies to various sets of individuals, trying to convince them to comply.
But in many cases that effort is avoidable if we word the policy differently. People will come on board when they understand what your policies have to do with their mandates. To make that connection, you need to look to governance documents that you and they have in common, especially corporate values and value-based principles.
When you hang your policies on values, you engage others at a level that resonates more strongly.
Policies in Smaller Organizations
Smaller organizations often struggle to generate and maintain a complete suite of corporate policies. The demand for new rules documents seems to be endless and the work is time-consuming, often exceeding your resources. So where do you start?
This session looks at how smaller organizations can focus their efforts with respect to policies, standards, and procedures.
Business, IM/IT, and Legal: A Collaboration of Strangers
People working in the business areas, IT support, and legal services all use the same words, but they sure don’t all speak the same language. Their approaches to problem-solving are different, often making it frustrating to talk to the other groups and difficult to collaborate with them on projects. To overcome the barriers of communication, we need to understand the differences among us, and make accommodation for it.
Attendees will leave with:
- an appreciation of the costs to an organization of misunderstanding and miscommunication
- techniques for improving collaboration among all groups
- an appreciation of the different analytical approaches of business line, IT support, and Legal Services workers