Philosophy Regarding Information - To Share Or Not To Share

Dear Import/Export Compliance Manager,

What’s your opinion on the dissemination of information to non-import/export compliance people such as engineers, salespeople and customer service people?  My boss and I disagree on whether sharing is a good idea or not.

Hoarding in Xalapa

Dear Hoarding,

Excellent question!  As the saying goes, “Information is the coin of the realm” and, if you want to get into politics, the simpler “Knowledge is power” applies.  Effective import/export compliance boils down to information, meaning the regulations and the data points determined to make them easier to comply with (ECCNs, HTS Codes, Reasons for Control, definition of Controlled Technology, etc.).  The Import/Export Compliance Department are the owners of this information, being responsible both for understanding the regulations and for determining the data points.

The question then is “How much to share?”  From the Import/Export Compliance Manager’s point of view, there seem to be two schools of thought and their associated practitioners.  The first group wants non-import/export compliance people to be able to recognize import/export compliance-type situations and know just enough to contact the Import/Export Compliance Department.  After that, the Import/Export Compliance Department either provides the information or handles the situation completely.  The other group thinks that information should be shared to all corners of the company, far and wide, and teach people how to use it.  For grins, let’s refer to them as the Mountaintop Sages and the Superspreaders.

The Mountaintop Sages’ chief rationale, as experienced by the Import/Export Compliance Manager, is that there is the belief that only by forcing people to come to the Import/Export Compliance Department for help will the Import/Export Compliance Department be made aware of all issues and operations going on in the company that it should be concerned with.  This is a problem universal to all import/export compliance departments; we should all be paranoid there is something going on that we don’t know about.  By holding back information and forcing people to come to us, we think we can have more confidence we will know what is going on and make up for crummy systems, lack of processes and/or lack of resources.  And we can provide super-detailed guidance on what to do.

The problem with the Mountaintop Sage strategy, as experienced by the Import/Export Compliance Manager, is that most non-import/export compliance people think of import/export compliance as a hurdle to getting their real work done.  Whatever the task is, whether filling out a commercial invoice for a FedEx shipment, determining the ECCN for a product under development or knowing whether to be worried that a potential customer is doing business in Iran, the person wants to get the information as quickly as possible so they can move the process along.  When faced with the choice of having to call or e-mail the Import/Export Compliance Department and then potentially having to wait a while for the response versus just making a guess as to the information, many people will make that guess or ask someone in their group.  More compliance-minded but also efficiency-minded people will get the answer from the Import/Export Compliance Department the first time and reference that same answer forever.  Then, as regulations and processes change, you have someone in the Sheboygan shipping department using the same commercial invoice they were using since the Berlin Wall. 

The Import/Export Compliance Manager, a huge believer in hidden messaging, thinks that the Mountaintop Sage strategy also sends a message to the non-import/export compliance person: we don’t trust you to handle this information on your own.  You, the chemist with a doctorate, the customer service manager with twenty years of experience, the dedicated shipping clerk who pulls sixty hour weeks and had to work on New Year’s Eve, you can’t be trusted with this information.  This also leads to more of an ‘Us vs. Them’ conflict between non-import/export compliance and Import/Export Compliance, making Import/Export Compliance seem to be the dreaded, faceless, nothing-better-to-do ‘Other’ instead of living, breathing people who just want to ensure the company’s success through compliance with import/export regulations. 

Let’s contrast this with the Superspreader strategy.  When information, such as HTS Codes, ECCNs, which countries require export licenses for which products and what questions to ask a potential customer who asks a question about Iran, is shared with non-import/export compliance employees, they receive several messages.  The first is an implicit We trust you to do the right thing with this information within existing processes.  What is behind this is a desire to make the non-import/export compliance person’s life easier by not requiring them to try to get an import/export compliance person on the phone or to respond to an e-mail; instead, give them the tools to get the job down now!  The unspoken agreement, however, is that at some point the employee may need to be elevated to the Import/Export Compliance Department.  It is up to you to educate the users of the information where to draw the line.  The Import/Export Compliance Manager likes to bring up the economic Law of Comparative Advantage: salespeople are good at making sales, logistics people are good at moving the goods, engineers are good at designing products, import/export compliance people are good at determining how to ensure compliance with import/export regulations.  Like the Mountaintop Sages, the Superspreaders don’t want people to handle import/export compliance by themselves.  The message both schools of thought send is that they have enough other things to worry about so Import/Export will take it from here.  The difference is that the Superspreaders provide them with sufficient information to easily proceed.

Another benefit of Superspreading is that it reduces the workload for you!  If you don’t have to respond to ten e-mails a day from the Customer Service Department asking for ECCNs because they’re stored in an internal database accessible by all, that’s more time you have freed up for more productive activities.  What you need to do, however, is to ensure that the Customer Service Department knows the difference between EAR99 and 5A002 and when to escalate to the Import/Export Compliance Department.  This requires training, of course, but sends the message of trust AND that, despite the different job functions, we’re all in this together.  It also sends the message that you want to help them do their jobs better.  And, if non-import/export compliance people feel better about import/export compliance, they are more likely to think proactively when encountering new situations which you may not be aware of.  Non-import/export compliance people who think of import/export compliance as a hurdle are much less likely to bring you in on a potential issue, thus forcing you to either miss it completely or have to clean it up when it’s too late or when time is pressing.  It even makes your department look better than support departments using the Mountaintop Sage strategy.

Be sure to put your information in a central online repository.  You want people to be trained to go to a certain place online so that whenever data is changed, such as when you find out you guys goofed on an HTS Code for a key product, you don’t have to send out a carmaker-style mass recall notice.  You simply change the information in your online database for future users of information (though you would of course need to alert anyone who would be directly affected such as Product Marketing Managers trying to use duty rates to determine profitability targets).  You must make sure that people aren’t saving files on their desktops such as prefilled Commercial Invoice templates with the HTS Codes and ECCNs they’ve been using for years, however.  Meet such people halfway by making the Commercial Invoice as easy to fill out as possible (if you’re using Excel, make prodigious use of VLOOKUPs and drop-down menus!).  And, best of all, people will spread the information to others without you having to lift a finger. 

Superspreaders are also more likely to provide solid quality management system (QMS) documents such as standard operating procedures and work instructions to employees.  The Import/Export Compliance Manager has extolled the benefits of such documents here. 

So yes, the Import/Export Compliance Manager is a Superspreader.  The only downside is that there is a lot of work on the front end.  Ultimately, though, the benefits are enormous.  Superspreading is a key component in the overarching goal of increasing the effectiveness of the Import/Export Compliance Department.  You and your colleagues can’t be everywhere at once and thus be all-knowing; you need colleagues in other departments to be on the look-out for you!  Hoarding information and making life more difficult for them will, ironically, make it more difficult for you to be aware of things you should know about (unless employees fear for their jobs lest they don’t contact you).  You must have confidence not only in other employees but in yourself and your department.  If you need the Mountaintop Sage strategy because you can’t trust the employees, well, that’s a culture problem that is highly likely negatively impacting the company in more ways than just import/export compliance.