The summer is my favorite season of the year. Some folks are winter-holiday people—not me. Those holidays are stressful: Secret Santas to deal with, law school exams to grade, and end-of-year bills to collect. Summer provides a chance to rest, enjoy the warm weather and mosquitos, and read a few new books on vacation. Many professionals like some light beach reading, but compliance professionals are always on the job—they need something more substantive.
CorpCounsel.com has you covered. Here are three books to load on your iPad or Kindle (or even in print!) that will help you relax productively on your vacation:
This is a well-written book that uses behavioral psychology to understand how logic can help offset the biases that exist in our intuition. For Kahneman, intuition is thinking fast and emotional—like our response to an image. Logic requires effort and thinking slow—like a math problem. The goal of Kahneman's book (recommended to me by forecasting pioneer Dr. Phil Tetlock) is to identify and understand errors in our judgment and choices with the hope that greater understanding will result in better decisions.
Kathneman won the Nobel prize in economics in 2002. His book is a must-read for compliance professionals to help them understand how we all make decisions. Understanding the biases in decision-making helps compliance professional develop a more robust compliance program designed to prevent and detect compliance failures and mitigate risks.
Simpler focuses on government regulation and cost-benefit analysis. Sunstein is a Harvard Law School professor who was head of the White House’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs from 2009-2012. In his book, Sunstein advocates for a system of regulatory Moneyball in which regulators focus on probable empirical outcomes of regulations, as opposed to soft inputs such as perceived reactions of various constituencies.
Sunstein compares this system of regulation to Billy Beane, the Oakland Athletics manager who, in Michael Lewis’s Moneyball, famously used statistics in big-league baseball as opposed to relying solely on scouting reports. Not only is Sunstein's book easy to read, but for compliance professionals trying to navigate the minefield of government regulations and enforcement, Sunstein's book provides a refreshing path towards efficient and more user-friendly regulation.
The author recounts his difficult journey to becoming a writer after he left college football at Louisiana State University and the strong sense of community and pride he felt as an LSU player. Bradley is a noted sports writer and former lineman for LSU. The traits that Bradley shows us in the LSU football team—pride, hard work and sacrifice, commitment, and putting the team before the individual—are applicable to any organization. Compliance begins with a strong culture, and what better way to find out about creating a culture of leadership than to look inside of Tiger Stadium (Death Valley)? To love Bradley’s book, you don’t have to like football—just honest writing.
Ryan McConnell is a partner at Morgan Lewis and former federal prosecutor. He teaches both corporate compliance and criminal procedure at the University of Houston Law Center. He is counting down the days until the college football kickoff. Send your summer reading suggestions to him at rdmcconnell@uh.edu.
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