Chief Discipline Officer

A friend of mine works in an organization that went through a merger. Or was it an acquisition? Anyway, the new organization brought also a new function: the chief discipline officer. I had never heard of that function or job title before.
So I had to look it up. And this is what I found. Most of the times the title is Chief Discipline and Conduct Officer. And many of these jobs are in emerging countries as part of a UN peacekeeping missions. As I understand it, the Chief Discipline Officer must detect and react to behaviour that does not comply to values and rules. There is always a trio of prevention, enforcement and remedial.
Indeed, there are awful incidents with soldiers abroad: bullying, rape, torture, … And it’s clear that misconduct can undermine the very credibility of a mission. In such an environment exemplary behaviour is of the essence.

Misconduct

So let’s we zap back to corporate life. What does a Chief Discipline Officer do? And why does that role even exist?
The Chief Discipline Officer that I heard about seemed to only look for error, deviation, non-compliance. He seemed to focus on punishment as way of remedial, and not on prevention or correction. It became a blaming game.
Like with the soldiers abroad, people who misbehave within an organization pose a problem. But should it be left to a separate function to keep up good behaviour? Or should it not be the leader who makes sure that people behave according to the defined framework? And if we have audit, compliance officers, why would we need chief conduct officers?

Terror

So governance becomes terror when people abuse the power that  is inherent to the function. And the problem of power is that it can only be maintained by either keeping the other weak, or by increasing its intensity. If information is the basis of power, it can only be maintained by not sharing information. When knowledge is the basis, people can only keep it when they withhold knowledge from others. And by keeping people less competent. If it’s about pressure, people need to exert pressure on others and probably increase it over time. And what if the power comes from terrorising people, scaring them and threatening them with disciplinary action, dismissal? Would that work? Would it create enough fear to sustainably steer behaviour in the desired direction?
The abuse of power by a chief discipline officer is in itself a problem. What do people do when controls are such that people experience them as terror?

• they can leave;
• they can adapt;
• they can develop strategies to mislead governance;
• they can laugh at the absurdity of the role. Fear evaporates through humour. So does power.

Power is something strange. It’s valuable when it is not used. And it’s not because the incumbent has the power attached to the role, that he will get the authority needed to properly execute the role. On the contrary, When governance becomes terror, it loses its value.

Trust

The only way to make governance, including a role like the chief discipline officer, work is through trust. If people can trust those who govern, they will respect them. More, at that point governance gets the authority it deserves and needs. But trust is not gained by imposing, blaming and punishing. It is gained by explaining, respecting, helping. And whenever disciplinary action is appropriate, it requires an execution that is as much as possible respectful.
And maybe we should not imitate what’s needed in a sensitive and often hazardous peace keeping mission to corporate life. Come on.