Behavioural Science of Fraud and Cultural Audits with Dr Attracta Lagan

YS Up - Governance and Boards

In this episode of YS Up Governance and Boards Podcast, 3YS Owls Governance Consultants, Ainslie Cunningham and Deb Anderson interview Dr. Attracta Lagan who is the Co-Principal at Managing Values Pty Ltd. We explore with Dr. Lagan the behavioural science of fraud and cultural audits, system 1 and system 2 thinking, the work of some Nobel Prize winners, including Richard Thaler and Elinor Ostrom and Zappo's as an example of the importance of valuing culture within an organisation. " It's a cultural audit. So, it works on three levels. We would go in and we would do focus groups across each section in the organisation. We would do one to one interviews with the leadership team, because what we're trying to see is there a shared idea, shared success formula for the organisation, because believe it or not, when you go into the leadership team, people often assume that everyone thinks like me. And the first thing that we discover when we do a cultural audit at the top, is that not all the leaders are thinking in the same way. So, you've got your cross section, with focus groups, you've got your individual one to ones, and then we do an electronic diagnostic through an organisation. So, the last organisation, we worked with had 135,000 employees. So, there's no way we were going to be able to do you know, focus groups with everyone. So, we did focus groups a representative sample of the organisational size. We did the one to ones with Exco members, and then we sent in an electronic survey. And so, we're comparing those three sources of truth basically. And what you find often is that the view from the top is much rosier than the view from the bottom. And then you've got a different view in the middle. And then what you do with the results is that you feed it back to each of those three groups. So, we're verifying. Is this your experience? What perhaps is leading you to this conclusion? What needs to happen for you to change your idea of how things happen here? We all suffer from 173 biases and shortcuts in the way we think this is what the science tells us. So increasingly we're challenging people to think about the assumptions they bring to the table, because you're not coming into an organisation. You're not developing your strategy from square one. You're actually projecting onto your strategy, all your assumptions, people are inherently lazy, people aren't self-motivated, all those other things. " - Dr. Attracta Lagan Summary of episode · Behavioural science of fraud · Cultural audits · The impact of sets of eyes poster's watching over trading rooms · System 1 and System 2 thinking by Daniel Kahneman - Recipient of 2002 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences · Behaviour science is a combination of psychology, sociology, evolutionary science · Richard Thaler's nudge theory · The influence of social media on culture · The...