This year’s World Cup has seen its share of exciting individual contributions, but teams advancing to the tournament’s knockout rounds got there in part because they are just that — teams. Likewise, corporate governance is increasingly a team sport, write Emanuel Batista of Kroll and compliance and ethics executive Juliana Jaccoud Molina.
The 2026 FIFA World Cup men’s soccer tournament demonstrates that elite teams rely on more than talent alone. Modern soccer depends on conditioning, analytics, logistics and robust infrastructure to sustain performance under real-world risks. While individual brilliance remains important, it no longer determines outcomes independently.
Corporate governance is evolving in the same way, with integrity determined not by good intentions but by whether systems work in real-world conditions. Ethics is an operational capability rather than a reflection of character, a distinction reinforced in the DOJ’s “Evaluation of Corporate Compliance Programs.” It must be built with intent, properly resourced and continuously improved through the plan-do-check-act (PDCA) cycle, a four‑step management method well-established in manufacturing, healthcare and project management.
This systems‑based approach is consistent with ISO 37301, the international standard for
