LRN (company)

LRN
Incorporated
Industry Ethics and legal compliance education
Founded 1994
Founder Dov Seidman
Number of locations
 New York City, Los Angeles, London, India
Area served
 Global
Key people
 Dov Seidman, CEO
Number of employees
 250
Website www.lrn.com

LRN, founded in 1994,[1] is an American company specializing in advising and educating organizations like the NFL,[2] Dell, Kellogg's[3] and Pfizer[4] about ethics and regulatory compliance, as well as corporate culture, governance and leadership.[5][6] LRN was originally seen as being highly disruptive to the legal industry[1][7] and later evolved into a training, advisory and education firm.[4] The company is guided by the philosophy of founder Dov Seidman, based on his New York Times best-selling book How.[8] It received a $30 million investment from Softbank in 2000.[9]

History

Early History

Dov Seidman founded Legal Research Network (later changed to “LRN”) two years out of Harvard Law School.[1][9] While working at a law firm, he was assigned a three-week task to research a basic legal issue.[10] He had the idea that clients could save time and money if there was a company that offered legal knowledge and analysis services through an expert network of academics and lawyers.[11] The research would then be repurposed in a database licensed to companies. He was able to pre-sell a $500,000 contract to MCI based on the idea.[10] He raised $2 million from 42 investors to launch the company.[9][12] In the first year, LRN had a network of 937 legal experts in over 2,500 subjects and attracted 90 clients, 34 of them from Fortune 500 companies.[1] American Lawyer magazine featured LRN in a feature story called "Should You be Afraid of This Man?" because of concerns in the legal industry that LRN would undercut law firms by charging substantially less.[1]

The company added ethics and compliance training in the later 1990s as part of an effort to spread legal and ethical awareness throughout organizations, instead of just in their law departments.[7][13] Online classes, starting in the 1990s, facilitated mass training of thousands of employees at large multi-nationals like Johnson & Johnson and Pfizer.[14] Pfizer trained all 150,000 of its employees with LRN courses.[14] Subjects included complying with sexual harassment laws, trade secrets and anti-trust.[7][15]

By the year 2000, 200 of the Fortune 500 companies were clients of LRN and the company was reported to be rapidly growing, according to Fortune magazine.[14][15] High-profile corporate ethics scandals like those at Enron, WorldCom, and Tyco accelerated the demand for corporate ethics education. Corporations that took steps to train employees were less likely to be held liable by the U.S. Department of Justice and other regulators for their missteps.[14]

Starting in the early 2000s, the company offered "common standards" for ethics and corporate compliance education. Competitors like Johnson & Johnson and Pfizer shared as much of 90% of the course materials, helping to standardize best practices for business ethics across corporate America.[14]

Seidman testified in 2004 before the U.S. Sentencing Commission about the need for companies to develop ethical cultures instead of “check-the-box”, compliance-only approaches, and his testimony helped shaped the amendments to the Federal Sentencing Guidelines.[16]

LRN was originally headquartered in California and moved its headquarters to New York City in 2012.[17] It also has office in London and India.[18]

How

In 2007, Seidman published the New York Times best-selling book How, which publicly introduced the framework of the business philosophy created at LRN.[8] In it, he argues that companies that "outbehave" the competition will also "outperform" the competition financially.[19] An expanded edition of the book was published in 2011 with a forward by President Bill Clinton.[20] Seidman advocates that companies differentiate themselves via good behavior toward customers and clients because globalization has made many products and services commodities. He also says that the rise of networked technology has made it more difficult to hide bad behavior.[19] According to How, there are three models of company management: "Blind Obedience", "Informed Acquiescence", and "Self Governance."[21] LRN promotes self-governance as the most transparent, values-based model and therefore, most likely to facilitate "principled behavior."[12] LRN commissioned an independent study which reported that only three percent of organizations are fully self-governing.[12] Self-governing companies in the survey were said to five times more innovative than "blind obedience" companies.[12][21]

Organization

LRN has a flat reporting structure which emphasizes "collaborative management."[22] A New York Times column described the company as moving toward self-governance with staff reporting to the company mission.[22] (The company's stated mission is to "inspire principled performance" and revolves around the values of "integrity, passion, truth and humility.")[12] Job titles were largely eliminated from the company, [23] and "employee councils" handle major functions like recruiting and conflict resolution. The company also advocates transparency; employees write each other's employee reviews and all are published online, including the CEO's.[22]

Services

LRN's services include analyzing corporate cultures, rewriting their codes of conduct, and providing ethical-compliance education and training to their employees.[14] LRN emphasizes principles and values rather than "blindly" following rules.[24] Its online education platform offers about 500 courses in 50 languages, on topics including international corruption law, intellectual property, data protection, and environmental sustainability.[14] LRN ethics training materials include videos, blogs, quizzes, social media and video games.[3] Dell told the Wall Street Journal in 2014 that LRN developed an ethics game for it entitled the "Honesty Project."[3]

Partnerships

In 2007, LRN became a member of the World Economic Forum (Davos) "Community of Global Growth Companies."[25]

Since 2008, LRN has been the corporate partner of The Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity’s Prize in Ethics Essay Contest, an annual competition for students to analyze ethical issues.[16]

LRN joined the United Nations Global Compact in 2010, working to help companies adopt a set of universally accepted values.[26]

LRN has been in partnership with the Clinton Global Initiative since 2011 to encourage organizations’ to adopt "values-based leadership." LRN works with members of the Clinton Global Initiative on forum for "principled leadership", governance and operations.[27]

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 Osborne, D.M. American Lawyer, "Should You Be Afraid of this Man?" June, 1995 (profile of Legal Research Network)
  2. ↑ Pompei, Dan (24 March 2014). "Can This Man Help Save the NFL's Soul?". SportsOnEarth.com. Retrieved 8 June 2015.
  3. 1 2 3 DiPietro, Ben (26 September 2014). "Turning Employees Into Ethics Believers". Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 8 June 2015.
  4. 1 2 McGill Murphy, Richard (2 February 2010). "Why Doing Good Is Good for Business". Fortune. Retrieved 8 June 2015.
  5. ↑ Kleiner, Art (29 May 2012). "The Thought Leader Interview: Dov Seidman". Strategy + Business. Retrieved 27 May 2015.
  6. ↑ Mahler, Jonathan (5 October 2014). "If the Word 'How' Is Trademarked, Does This Headline Need a ™?". The New York Times. Retrieved 18 July 2015.
  7. 1 2 3 Kleiner, Art (22 November 1999). "Learning the Law with a Mouse". National Law Journal.
  8. 1 2 NYT Best Seller list - How: Why HOW We Do Anything Means Everything, November 2011
  9. 1 2 3 Vrana, Debora (24 January 2000). "Southland's Attraction Grows for Large Internet Venture Firms". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 8 June 2015.
  10. 1 2 "A Principal with Principle". Harvard Law Bulletin. 1 April 2004. Retrieved 8 June 2015.
  11. ↑ The Los Angeles Times "How I Made It: Dov Seidman, His keen sense of ethics has paid off handsomely", July 5, 2009
  12. 1 2 3 4 5 Haaretz.com "Dov Seidman's secret: You don't have to be a sucker to succeed", July 1, 2012
  13. ↑ Madnick, WendyThe Jewish Journal "An Ethical Vision: ADL to honor attorney's efforts to raise moral standards of businesses", March 6, 2003
  14. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Kirkpatrick, David (October 2002). "Serving Up Scruples". Fortune Magazine.
  15. 1 2 Holding, Reynolds (3 February 2000). "Baby Lawyers Too Costly to Waste". San Francisco Gate. Retrieved 8 June 2015.
  16. 1 2 Clancy, Heather (26 October 2013). "Disruptor - Dov Seidman". ZDNET. Retrieved 8 June 2015.
  17. ↑ Baker, Mila (5 September 2014). "21st Century Organization Design: Integrating Work Environment, Work Experience, and Leadership". Work Design Magazine. Retrieved 8 June 2015.
  18. ↑ "LRN to start offering its services in India this year". 20 July 2012. Retrieved 9 June 2015.
  19. 1 2 Seidman, Dov (September 2007). How. Wiley. ISBN 1118106377.
  20. ↑ Amazon Book Review - How: Why HOW We Do Anything Means Everything
  21. 1 2 Kostigen, Thomas (4 November 2011). "How we work is as important as what we do". MarketWatch. Retrieved 10 June 2015.
  22. 1 2 3 Seidman, Dov (23 June 2012). "Let a Mission Govern a Company". New York Times. Retrieved 9 June 2015.
  23. ↑ Weber, Lauren (9 April 2014). "Companies Say No to Having an HR Department". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 8 June 2015.
  24. ↑ Bogoslaw, David (3 December 2013). "Wayne Brody: Making the business case for E&C". Corporate Secretary. Retrieved 10 June 2015.
  25. ↑ "World Economic Forum Global Growth Companies". World Economic Forum.
  26. ↑ "Communication on Progress/LRN". UNGlobalCompact.org. United Nations.
  27. ↑ "Establishing a Practice Forum for Principled Leadership, Performance & Operations". LRN.com. LRN.
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