Culture & Compliance Chronicles: Building a Culture of Fairness and Transparency with Danny Mayhew of Sanofi

Podcast
December 11, 2024
33:12 minutes
Speakers:
Amanda N. Raad , Nitish Upadhyaya ,
Richard Bistrong
,
Danny Mayhew

On this episode of Culture & Compliance Chronicles, Amanda Raad and Nitish Upadhyaya from Ropes & Gray’s Insights Lab, and Richard Bistrong of Front-Line Anti-Bribery, are joined by Danny Mayhew, the global head of organisational justice and smart assurance at Sanofi. Danny shares his unique journey from law enforcement to the corporate world, emphasizing the importance of empathy in investigations and the role of organisational justice in fostering a fair and transparent workplace. They explore how data, behavioral insights, and innovative tools like AI and machine learning are being leveraged to predict and prevent misconduct ensuring a proactive approach to compliance that helps protect and support employees and gets the business on side.

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Transcript

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[00:00] Intros and Icebreakers

Nitish Upadhyaya: Welcome back to the Culture & Compliance Chronicles, the podcast that gives you new perspectives on legal, compliance and regulatory challenges faced by organizations and individuals worldwide. The clue is in the title—culture is at the heart of everything. It’s the endlessly shifting patterns that govern our environment and behaviors. The magic is in amplifying certain patterns and dampening others. Let’s see if we can pique your curiosity, get you to challenge some of your perceptions and give you space to think differently about some of your own challenges. I’m Nitish Upadhyaya, and I’m joined by Amanda Raad and Richard Bistrong.

Amanda Raad: Hi there. Glad to be back.

Richard Bistrong: Great to be back. Thanks, Nitish. Thanks, Amanda.

Nitish Upadhyaya: After our amazing Culture & Compliance Chronicles: Innovative Compliance Strategies with Katie Daniels episode with Katie Daniels last time, where we talked about practical applications of behavioral science, data science, and just the idea of being human in the world of compliance, who do we have in store for our listeners today?

Amanda Raad: Another great panelist—we’re so lucky today to have Danny Mayhew here. He has the best title perhaps on the face of the planet. He is currently at Sanofi—he is the global head of organisational justice and smart assurance, and global security business partner. More on the title later. But importantly, I’ve known Danny for a really long time and have enjoyed working alongside Danny and his innovative ways of thinking. He has a background in investigations and in compliance, but importantly, also in law enforcement. I just love the perspective and the forward-thinking that he brings to everything that he does, so I can’t wait to explore some of this together today. We have some icebreakers that we love to do for everyone so we can get to know them a little bit better. And so, our rapid-fire questions, the first one, Danny, is: Give us three things that you think we should know about you.

Danny Mayhew: First of all, thanks for having me on—really good to be here. I would say I’m a huge dog fan. According to my wife, I have an unhealthy relationship with my Labrador called Reggie. He basically follows me around everywhere I go—I love it because he’s just attached to me. So, that’s probably the first fact. Second are the exercises and my meditation. I’m a big boxing fan, and I love to just get out in some fresh air or a gym, get a sweat on. I think with a predominantly desk-based job, that helps me and my brain space definitely. Last thing, sayings. I’m a bit of a one for finding sayings when people pop them up in different places, and the one I really love is, “Never regret a day in your life; good days give you happiness, bad days give you experience, the worst days give you lessons, and the best days give you memories.” I think that’s a really poignant way to approach lots of things and certainly on a day-to-day basis.

Amanda Raad: That’s so good. Alright, next question: One thing that you are curious about?

Danny Mayhew: You’re going to think this is strange... I really like watches. I always wonder why people without a watch look at their wrist when you ask them the time. I always notice watches because I just like watches, and it’s a very strange thing when you see someone without a watch look at their wrist for the time.

Amanda Raad: Yes, then you wonder if they just forgot their watch or if they really don’t have one. Okay, the last thing that has surprised you?

Danny Mayhew: I have a lovely wife—I’ve been married for over 30 years—and two daughters, and I do question and wonder sometimes how they’ve actually put up with me for so long. I have nuances and behaviors that a lot of people probably wouldn’t put up with, but they’ve stuck by me, and they’ve supported me throughout my time. So, that’s probably the biggest surprise to me at times, if I’m honest.

Amanda Raad: That’s lovely. Alright, because I’m going to hold myself to it and we’re going to cover what we promised to cover today, why don’t we go ahead and dive in. Tell us again your title and a little bit about the story behind your title.

[03:50] Danny’s Career Reflections

Danny Mayhew: Sure. The official title is global head of organisational justice and smart assurance, and it came about when I was approached by a colleague of ours you know very well, Julien Durand, who’s the current chief compliance officer at Sanofi. He was an ex-colleague of mine when I was at my previous company, Amgen—he moved around and then ended up with Sanofi. He called me up about three years ago now and said, “I’ve taken a new role. I’m six months in. We have a five-year strategy to transform the company, and I have a role that might be of interest to you.” So, I said, “Okay. What is it?” And he said initially it was going to be global head of investigations and monitoring, so I accepted on that basis because it was the job that worked for me and was the next step for me.

Then, three weeks before I started, he called me up, he said, “Change of title slightly.” I said, “What?” He said, “Global head of organisational justice and smart assurance,” at which point I went, “Organisational justice? You’re going to have to help me out with that one. “What does that mean? What’s the context? What does it encompass?” Then, he started to explain and break it down, and then I obviously started to do more research into the theory behind organisational justice and what it means, and it made absolute sense. So, I started three weeks later. Currently, my role incorporates internal investigations, the global monitoring program, our speak-up office, the oversight for corrective and disciplinary action, consistency and application of that, and our newly formed global ombuds office—they’re the components that sit under the umbrella of organisational justice and smart assurance.

Nitish Upadhyaya: Before we dive in, tell the audience about your interesting background, which has contributed, I think, to your view on organisational justice, investigations, and various other things. So, where did this journey start for you?

Danny Mayhew: It’s quite a while ago now—I was 23. I needed a regular job—I was about to get married. I was playing on a soccer team (a football team) with a couple of guys who were police officers, and they said, “Come and join the police.” I was like, “Sounds interesting.” I didn’t really want a regular nine-to-five job, so I applied, and they offered me a role to start with outside of London—I was in Suffolk, where I live, but in a regional role eventually. I was really interested in the investigation side, so I had to do a little bit of time in uniform (18 months), then I got into a specialist intelligence team, and then moved into what they call “CID” or criminal investigations—that was the platform to move through various roles within the organization, a couple of promotions. After about 10 or 11 years in investigations outside of London, I transferred into London just around the early 2000s, when the 7/7 bomb attacks took place.

I moved into a specialist crime directorate team there that was focusing on homicides, organized crime—those types of complex and serious investigations. That was the foundation that gave me the skills, if you want, to take forward, but I had no idea that the skills I had gained throughout a 20-year career in law enforcement would be transferable into the corporate world.

[06:45] Tips for Interviews and Investigations

Nitish Upadhyaya: That is a fascinating journey. Talk me through how you’ve developed your approach and practices from day one as a new police officer to where you are now. What have you learned about interviewing folks and investigations in general?

Danny Mayhew: I think over the 20 years in law enforcement, I used to really enjoy the interviewing side of things—the people interaction. Yes, you have to do all the fact-finding, evidence gathering, and the analysis, but when it came to sitting in a room with someone who’s alleged to have done something wrong, understanding the thinking behind the why, and then some of the behaviors behind it—what happened in their life that pushed them down this road or ended up in this situation—I found the interviewing side to be really fascinating. Taking that skillset into the corporate world wasn’t that difficult. I think the biggest challenge—coming from where I’d come from—was, “Are you going to be seen as the internal corporate police when you make that move in?” I was listening to one of the podcasts not long ago and Richard mentioned his interactions with, I think, U.S. law enforcement agencies and said it wasn’t a pleasant experience.

Taking that mindset of you’re sitting in a corporate interview now with someone who’s the subject of your investigation—I think you need to be empathetic to them, you need to be understanding to them, and you need to be a good listener, because they might be today’s subject, but they might be tomorrow’s reporter. If they don’t leave the company (they’re going to stay within the company), they may be the person that spots the next issue and wants to report it or should hopefully want to report it. If they’ve had a bad experience through an internal investigation, they’re going to be less likely to promote what you’ve done to other people or speak highly of it or at least feel that they were fairly treated, and that will have an impact then on future engagements you have with the employee population. So, I think being empathetic definitely as a skillset to cross over is something I would endorse a lot.

I think secondly, just really understanding people’s backgrounds. Depending on their experiences in life—maybe they’ve had interactions with law enforcement prior to you sitting down in a corporate environment with them—the word “investigation” comes in and that will have a very big impact on certain people depending on their life experiences. So, I think you’ve got to soften that to some extent, explain to them, and help them understand why you’re there. You’re all on the same team. You’re all in the company. You’re all looking out for the company’s interest. If they can understand the need for you to be there and the reason and the rationale for you being there, sometimes having to ask difficult questions, hopefully they would leave that interview or that investigation feeling like you were fairly treated, listened to, compassion was shown, and understanding was given.

Nitish Upadhyaya: I think that’s—from a research perspective—one of the fundamental elements of organisational justice and procedural fairness. Talk to us more about what that entails and maybe how you’re bringing some research and ideas into the corporate world on these themes.

[09:35] A Practical View on “Organisational Justice”

Danny Mayhew: Definitely. The way I looked at it and my assessment of what “organisational justice” means is as an employee, how do you perceive or view the company you work for? Do you feel that they allow you to speak up? Do you feel that you can speak up without fear of retaliation? Do they hear you, and listen to you, more importantly? Does it feel psychologically safe in the environment you work in? Does the company share outcomes on decisions, whether that’s on corporate decisions, whether it’s on disciplinary decisions, whether it’s organisational changes and decisions around that? Do they share and make you feel like you’re part of that process? Do they treat everyone fairly and equitably? So, whether that’s in terms of promotions, trainings, development opportunities, or paying conditions, do you feel like you are fairly treated? I think if you can say “yes” to those elements, you’re more likely to have an employee population that’s invested in the company, more likely to be part of the company and grow with company, and that obviously leads to better performance, improved growth, and productivity.

Richard Bistrong: Thank you, Danny. To double down on the experience of empathy—Amanda and I have talked about this a number of times—as you shared, my experience with U.S. and U.K. law enforcement was an empathetic experience to where you want to share your story and you don’t feel like you’re sitting across the table from a group of people that are just waiting for that “gotcha” moment, which was the opposite experience I had during an internal investigation, where you felt like they were ready to jump across the table for that “gotcha” moment. Realizing that people need time to share their story that they might not necessarily be proud of is just so critical, so thank you for reinforcing that from your own current commercial, as well as former law enforcement, experience.

In today’s workforce, we’re going to have a group of people that are doing the wrong things for the wrong reason. They might be trying to gain controls for their own personal gain, whether that be an incentive, a reward, or a bonus. But, Danny, what about people that are doing the wrong thing or making the wrong decisions for what they think are the right reasons, that they may be taking a shortcut or circumventing a policy because they think it’s helping the company? In your market and in your field, it might be because they think they’re helping the patient or the health care practitioner. How do you deal culturally and behaviorally with that type of risk?

Danny Mayhew: We, like many large corporations, particularly in pharmaceuticals, are highly regulated. Policies and procedures are a key factor in how we operate as an organization, and it’s really important the employees understand what those policies and processes are, and what they can and can’t do. You can have the best policies and procedures on paper. If you put people into that environment and someone wants to try and maneuver a workaround, a shortcut, a quicker way to get to the result, they will try and find it—they will be very clever at being able to mask what it looks like. So, it makes your job as an investigator that much trickier because the nuanced way that they are approaching a particular subject on paper looks like, “This is legitimate. This doesn’t look like a problem.” But it’s the intention. Sometimes, you don’t get that until you sit across the table from someone, and you start asking those questions and digging into the thinking behind what they’ve done. Pressures—commercial pressures, sales pressures—are always there, and I think that’s a fact to consider as well. How hard is the company pushing these people and maybe not helping those decisions?

[13:25] Using Data to Triangulate Misconduct

Nitish Upadhyaya: When we spoke a few weeks back, you mentioned a new project that you’re undertaking to try and triangulate some of the issues or factors that might speak to—not misconduct now but—things that might eventuate in misconduct. So, talk us through how that relates to what you’ve just talked about and where is that process going.

Danny Mayhew: Obviously, a number of my team members relate to investigations, but I also have monitoring and speak-up. All the areas really give you data that can give you some insights into what’s happening in the organization at any one time. The numbers of investigations, the numbers of speak-up calls, monitoring deviations, and things you’re spotting through the monitoring activities—are you getting an increase in disciplinary action that’s happening in a certain place or region for a specific type of behavior? So, drawing those all together, what are insights? What is the story behind a peak, trend, or a topic? I think that’s where my role is trying to be better at taking that data, and you’ve got to be able to measure it to manage it. That’s why it’s really important that we’re building systems that can give us that level of data.

In our case management system, we’ve now got categories in it for root cause analysis and behavioral analysis. The investigators can make an assessment on their view on why that particular issue happened from a behavioral side, from a root cause analysis, and then you can start to see trends here: lack of awareness, lack of training, or just the opportunity presented itself. I think where we can draw insights from that is really helping us shape how we approach the investigations, and how we share the information with the business and with the wider population. I’ve always said, “Investigations isn’t a black box—it shouldn’t be.” Yes, you have to have confidentiality, you have to be mindful that you can’t share certain information, but once you’ve closed out an investigation, it’s really important that we share insights and findings to help educate the wider group.

Amanda Raad: I want to pick up on just a couple of those points that I think are so important that you mentioned, circling all the way back to the areas that are within your role. You described the function of really trying to understand the people, the trends, and why certain things are actually happening—now that you’ve actually been in the role for a while, how has it actually been in practice combining those different functions? Do you feel like you’re able to leverage the data and the different functions in a way that you’re able to start to tell a story? And is there anything missing—is there still a missing ingredient?

Danny Mayhew: That’s a really timely question because when I joined, I genuinely thought, “I’ll build a team, bring in a new system—six months in, it will be working.” Sanofi, like many big organizations, is a big ship to turn and it’s taken time. I’m now just over two years in, and I would say I’m at that point where I’ve finally managed to connect the different elements that we can start extracting that data and getting these insights. Beforehand, we could see this number of investigations, this number of help line calls, and this number of monitoring deviations—but what’s it actually telling you? That’s the bit we’re now getting into, about the storytelling and the insights to share with the business to actually give them the meaning behind the numbers and the why—that’s now what we’re really starting to see as we start to get better data and better insights. I’ve got a team of skilled investigators who are really professional about what they do, and they know the questions to ask. They know what we’re looking to try and understand and achieve, because part of it is not just doing the investigation, it’s: What’s the outcome? Have we learned something from this investigation which means we can prevent this happening in other places around the world? If you don’t share that, if you don’t look at programmatic enhancements, you’ll keep investigating the same thing over and over and over, and that’s brainless—no one wins out of that one.

Amanda Raad: Trying to understand the meaning behind the data, that is so hard, because it does require actually talking to people, talking to people with enough of an open mind, understanding the person that’s sitting there and the context they come into the situation with and the motivations and all of that. Are you trying to draw all of those pieces together? It sounds like you’re then trying to get the business to actually action so they know what the reasonable next steps might be.

Danny Mayhew: We are, yes—most definitely. We’re trying to do it on a quarterly basis. Historically, it used to happen maybe once/twice a year at the executive committee level. What I’m now going to start in 2025 is do quarterly reporting—high level, but enough to give more frequent, more real-time insights to what’s happening in a particular region or a business unit. Again, the leaders in those organizations get a feel for what’s current—there may be a spike in a particular issue in a particular area. Why do we think that’s happening? Is it something that’s happened in the business that’s pushed people down a certain path? Getting that information on a quarterly basis is much better than once a year. You finding out in December that something was happening in January, and if you’d known about it in January or February you might’ve been able to influence and prevent it potentially continuing if you’ve had that opportunity. So, definitely a factor there.

I think one thing as well, which doesn’t necessarily come into investigations but is part of the jigsaw, are the employee surveys we do. We have a “your voice” survey that comes out, and we’ve managed to get questions into that now around psychological safety, around people’s confidence to speak up, and their feelings toward the organization being transparent. That gives you an additional level of insight to how people view the organization, how it’s run, and the fairness and the confidence they have in it.

[18:50] Reactions from Leadership on Pattern Spotting Approach

Amanda Raad: That’s so helpful. What about the business leaders? How are they responding? Is this helpful information to them? Have you gotten any early feedback on how it’s being perceived?

Danny Mayhew: Our executive committee was great when we presented. They’re really interested in the “why.” If they’re seeing trends and patterns, “What’s happening? Why is this happening?” So, that goes back to your point about the data, the analysis, and what is it telling us. From a business unit level perspective, they are as well. We’re better now, I think, at partnering—the ethics and business integrity office definitely is a much better partner with the business. And I think it’s like anything—people used to say to me in law enforcement, “If you want to catch a criminal, you’ve got to think like one.” One of the best roles I had when I was in law enforcement was on a full-time informant handling team. My job was to deal with criminals, largely, who would give us information about other criminals, but they would give you so much insight to how things would happen and how things would take place that it made it much easier to then end up being a detective because you could start to think like they were. Speaking to the business, understanding their model, their pressures, the region they’re in—getting that level of insight and understanding makes it easier to then share the insights because we can then link it to a particular product launch or a particular event that was happening and why that might’ve led to some form of misconduct or noncompliance.

Richard Bistrong: This is fascinating. It’s a living example of what Amy Edmondson in her latest book, The Right Kind of Wrong, what we can learn from failures. She calls them “intelligent failures—ones where we can take a look at what happened, analyze it, and what lessons can we learn to reduce the likelihood that they keep repeating themselves. So, with that said, thinking of the investigations as being a feedback loop—not just an end in itself—are there any formal structures or mechanisms that you’ve had to put in place to assure that the information, the data, and the hot points that you’ve collected are informing ethics and compliance initiatives and programs, or maybe doubling down on training, for example?

Danny Mayhew: Yes. I think the system that we now have, case management system, has finally given us the ability to extract the information we can gather from the investigations and from monitoring. The monitoring program, we’ve built a similar in-house tool that allows us to really draw out data points, and it shows you the trends, the outliers, when things are looking out of sync, right down to product-level information, down to behavioral information. So, being able to take that information in a much simpler way than previously extracting lots of Excels and information and manually having to create pivot tables and charts is allowing us to, on a more frequent basis, share that information. I think that’s where we’re now starting to benefit and going into 2025 will be a real test for that, to show the business, “Here you go. We’re working alongside you. We’re not here just to control you. We’re here to inform you, work with you, and hopefully manage the risk.” Because the first line of defense is the business, and they should be as accountable as everyone else is for managing compliance and risk. And that’s the bit I think we’re trying to push harder, which is, “You’re the first line. We’re the second line, and audit comes in behind us. But let’s try and avoid things getting to audit and then finding it, because if we work with you and partner with you more, share our information and our insights, and you buy into that and accept your level of accountability, then we can hopefully reduce the overall risk across the company.”

[22:35] Internal Ombuds Office

Nitish Upadhyaya: I think just diving into that a little bit deeper, the ability to interrogate the data and understand those triggers and match them up with things that are happening—with Christmas fast approaching, there are things that you want to be thinking about, or gifts and entertainment, and catching people in that and understanding those trends. Then, you have the feedback loops and actually understanding what your people are feeling, how they’re interacting—you talked about engagement surveys. Talk a little bit about the internal ombuds office because that isn’t something we see very often in organizations, and how does that contribute to justice, fairness, and employees having a voice?

Danny Mayhew: This was added to the agenda that I had when I joined—it came up in a meeting with a business unit leadership team. Someone had been in a previous organization—they had a form of an internal ombuds office. I, in my previous company, was aware of ombuds offices, but it was an external body that you would refer, and employees could go to if they chose to. We became aware through the help line reports—some of which didn’t need to be investigated but to be managed better at a local level with a level of independence, with a level of neutrality that would’ve helped resolve that issue, and that wasn’t happening, sometimes down to the experience of the managers involved or the teams leading certain people—and things were allowed to drift and fester, and then it became more of a problem, and then it ended up in an investigation. We looked at it and said, “If this was managed earlier, this could’ve been prevented. How do you do that?”

We looked at several other companies that had forms of internal ombuds offices, so we took that, looked at the International Ombuds Association—what they did, how they structured, and what their process was—and built, with a remediation services vendor, a program, literally from the ground up. We want this as the internal program. We’re looking to train 20 people in the company from across different business units, not just some ethics and business integrity, HR, or people in culture, but from across the business because you get that depth of experience, diversity, and insights that would be great to share. And then, people can relate more to maybe going to someone who’s more of a colleague than someone who’s just in compliance. So, the goal was to set it up. We did it. It took about eight months to do it. The aim was to have it as an impartial, informal, confidential, and independent service that employees could go to with any kind of problem they might have.

Now, the ombuds team that we ultimately selected, were trained if someone was coming and saying, “There’s a high-risk issue here,” whether it’s a corruption issue or a personal safety issue, that they would escalate that internally and explain the need for us to deal with that as a company. But the charter they have and the governance model they have allows them to manage internal disputes—conflicts that might be arising in the workplace—across the company. And they’re empowered to have a set of options on a menu that they can empower the employee to ultimately help the employee resolve it themselves. They can’t fix everything, but they’re there to advise, guide, and if need be, help resolve things to a successful conclusion.

[25:35] Leveraging AI and Data Tools to Identify a Potential Slide Into Misconduct

Amanda Raad: Shifting gears a little bit, watching both you and your organization it seems you have had such a focus on forward-thinking tools, on data, on using machine learning, on using AI, and on just trying to be really proactive in how you can use technology. Obviously, that’s a super hot topic globally right now, but can you talk a little bit about how you are leveraging those tools and just share your thoughts on where things are headed in this space?

Danny Mayhew: Sure. Certainly, our CEO, Paul Hudson, has happily come out and said he wants us to be a leading company in terms of AI and the use of AI at scale across the organization, and that’s being driven across the company in multiple different ways. We’ve built (or it’s still under construction but there’s large elements of it completed), a data lake. In a huge company like this, there’s multiple different systems but we’re now connecting them in a centralized data lake. What we’re doing in compliance is connecting information from SAP, from WorkDay, from our events management tool, and from our training database so we can start to get connections between information systems that give you that additional level of insight.

One of the things that I’m particularly looking at with my teams as a future project is, can we start to see and potentially pick up predicting the likelihood of someone going down the route of a misconduct or bad behavior? For example, an employee score card. On a scale of one to 10. “Am I in line with my training? Are my travel & expenses (T&E) in order? Have there been any monitoring deviations on my activities? Have I been subject or included in any investigations? Have I had any problems with events that I’ve organized?” And you would get a score, like a credit score, on each of those. If you’re in time with you’re training and there’s no issues, you’d be sitting in a green zone—let’s say one to three. If you start to fall out of sync with timing, compliance, or issues, you might be getting into that mid range—five, six, seven. At that point, the system would be able to alert the manager or even the employee and say, “This a flag,” and then you could intervene earlier and potentially identify whatever the issue might be. That means they’re in that five, six, seven, eight zone, which would be more likely to lead to a more serious issue that could end up in an investigation. It’s an approach—we haven’t fixed it yet; we’re still connecting the dots—but I think that would give us that kind of predictive potential behavior analysis that would help intervene.

[28:20] Takeaways and Conclusion

Nitish Upadhyaya: I can’t wait to hear more about how that develops and have you back on to talk about the results and learnings. I suspect all of our listeners will be fascinated to hear what worked and also what didn’t—I’m sure there will be some bumps along the way.

Richard, what’s your key takeaway from our chat with Danny?

Richard Bistrong: What a fascinating conversation. Danny, we share a passion for boxing and watches, so maybe the next time we can take out the mitts and then have the conversation about the watches. This is really intriguing in terms of having investigations inform initiatives. I don’t think enough organizations really look at the data that’s captured in investigations and appreciate how they can help inform campaigns, trainings, and again, going back to helping make those failures to be “intelligent failures.” So, thank you for this conversation, Danny.

Danny Mayhew: Thank you very much—I really appreciate the conversation. If we can continue it on other subjects, I’ll be more than happy. It’s been great being part of it.

Nitish Upadhyaya: What about you, Amanda? What’s your big takeaway?

Amanda Raad: I have two. The first one is just where we ended on the data, the tools that you’re learning, and the data lake, which I know our team got very excited anytime someone talks about the data lake—we love that. But honestly, I hate silos—I’m very public about that. I think it creates real problems where people have different access to information and the information is sitting there and we can’t really use it. So, I love that you’re trying to put it all together and to use it in a way to enable people—including the people that are actually acting—to take a pause at the right moment before it’s too late. I think that’s really a great thing. I’m going to make you read that quote again because I really liked it—that would be my second takeaway.

Danny Mayhew: I’m happy to read it again. The last thing I was going to say was really, I think, taking the approach we’ve taken (and this has come from our CEO and Julien), which is, “There’s no losses—there’s just winning and learning.” The agile approach to this has helped me massively because you can take some of those risks and you can try certain things—it might not work, but you learn and you try again and you build on it. That is hugely empowering and gives you confidence to go out and try new things. But, yes, to go back to the quote: “Never regret a day in your life; good days give you happiness, bad days give you experience, worst days give you lessons, and the best days give you memories.” I think I’ve said that to both my daughters—hopefully they live by that. Life is short, so you have to make the most of it when you do get the opportunities.

Amanda Raad: I love it, Danny. Thank you so much.

Nitish Upadhyaya: What a wonderful takeaway. We always finish on a rapid-fire question: If you had to own one watch in the world, what would it be?

Danny Mayhew: The one I’ve actually got, my wife bought me. She got it for my fiftieth, and I was like, “Wow, that’s just lovely.” It’s an Omega. But the one I’ve kind of got my eyes on, a next present, is a Panerai Marina. It’s not so much for me about a name, a type, or cost of a watch—it’s just does it look like a nice watch? I don’t wear any other jewelry other than a wedding ring, so I think a nice watch helps.

Nitish Upadhyaya: Thank you so much for an illuminating conversation and a bit of an education, at least for me, about watches. I know what I might be asking for as a Christmas present. Where can listeners find out more about you and your work?

Danny Mayhew: I’m on LinkedIn under Danny Mayhew if you search for Sanofi. There’s a few things going to be coming out in the next couple of weeks around our ombuds office, the launch of that and some of the other projects we’re running that we’re sharing externally as well now as we start to learn from the environment but also hopefully try and shape some of the external environment too with what we’re doing and the approach to compliance that can change. Just like anything, it doesn’t have to be fixed. I know there are certain rules and regulations, but it can evolve, improve, and change, and we’d like to be part of that, certainly in the pharma industry.

Nitish Upadhyaya: Brilliant. Thanks for giving us such an interesting conversation and being so open about the direction that you and Sanofi are going in. I’m sure we’ll have you back, but in the meantime, have an amazing Christmas and a wonderful start to the New Year, and the same to all of our listeners. We will see you all very soon.

Thank you all for tuning in to the latest episode in our Culture & Compliance Chronicles series. For more information about our series and any of the ideas discussed today, take a look at the links in our show notes. You can also subscribe to the series wherever you regularly listen to podcasts, including on Apple and Spotify. Amanda, Richard and I will be back very soon for our next chapter. If you have topics you’d like us to cover or novel perspectives you want everyone else to hear about, get in touch. Thanks again for listening. Have a wonderful day and stay curious.


Show Notes:

The Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well (Edmondson) https://www.amazon.com/Right-Kind-Wrong-Science-Failing/dp/1982195061

Danny Mayhew: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-mayhew-ma-hons-62a9204b/?originalSubdomain=uk

Richard Bistrong
Ethics and Compliance Consultant; CEO, Front-Line Anti-Bribery LLC
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Danny Mayhew
Global Head of Organisational Justice and Smart Assurance, Sanofi
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