Ditch the Rules and Grab the Guidelines
Today’s post is an excerpt from the cutting room floor. It was in an early draft of my upcoming book One Piece of Paper: The Simple Approach to Powerful, Personal Leadership (pre-order your copy by CLICKING HERE). It covers how to lead through guidelines rather than leading through rules.
We need guidance during challenging times. We need something to keep us within healthy and productive boundaries. We are human and make mistakes. Having personal guidelines that we live our lives by will remind us how we want to behave and keeps us safe and on track.
This does not have to be a detailed list of do’s and don’ts. A laundry list of rules and regulations is not practical. Instead, a judgment-based approach that can be broadly applied to any situation is much more flexible, manageable, and applicable. Every situation is different and each decision we face will have a variety of new and unpredictable factors involved.
But if we have judgment-based guidelines to govern our conduct, we can apply them to any situation we face instead of having to frantically search a list of do’s and don’ts only to find that particular situation is not covered. The simpler the guidelines, the more powerful they can be.
I learned how powerful simple guidelines can be while I was a cadet at West Point. In our regulations book we had over 180 different infractions that we could be written up and disciplined for. They were overly specific. They ranged from “Having lights on after lights out” to “Underage drinking” to “Laundry folded improperly.” If there was something we could possibly do wrong, there was a disciplinary code for it.
Administering this code of regulations was difficult to say the least. If you wanted to write somebody up for an infraction, you first had to know all the regulations then you had to find the correct disciplinary code to write your report.
If you were unfortunate enough to have a situation where someone you were writing up had committed an offense that did not have a specific disciplinary code assigned to it, you had to write a lengthy explanation of the offense and include the document codes for infractions that were “in close proximity” to the offense. What a nightmare!
Then one day someone had a brilliant idea. They realized that this method of enforcing discipline was overly proscriptive in defining acceptable and unacceptable behavior had created an unwieldy system. They simplified those 180 infractions down to two. They were “Error in judgment with minor effect” and “Error in judgment with major effect.” The leaders in the organization were empowered to make decisions and mete out justice according to a descriptive code of conduct versus a proscriptive one.
The disciplinary system became more efficient and “outlier” offenses that previously had no associated code could be quickly and effectively dealt with without a huge burden of defining precedent and related offenses. Those two regulations became the guidelines by which we governed our behaviors as cadets.
What does this mean for you?
How do you articulate performance standards in your organization? Is it a long list of rules, standards, metrics, and infractions or goals? Or is it a set of behavioral guidelines you want your team to adhere to?
I’d submit that the former is particularly difficult to manage and you might want to ask your team members how they feel about working in such an environment.
The latter is harder to manage because you *will* have people who deviate from the guideline (because it’s not overly specific and it’s subject to interpretation). In the long run, though, you’ll create a culture where those standards become the norm. People feel empowered to act within those guidelines and their sense that you trust them goes up dramatically.
Take some time to evaluate how your team functions and how you set standards. If you can loosen the collar a little for your folks, they’ll operate more freely and the environment of “gotcha!” can eventually disappear.
You hire people because they’re smart. Try giving them a little latitude to demonstrate their smarts and judgment. I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised by the results.
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– Mike Figliuolo at thoughtLEADERS, LLC
– Get the latest updates on my upcoming book One Piece of Paper – CLICK HERE
Mike, I enjoyed the piece and I agree with it wholeheartedly in theory. But what do you do about the overly litigious "handbook-has-to-say-everything" world that we live in? I've got lawyers and insurance folks trying to get me to put everything and anything in my handbooks. And in some of my companies, I have a whole range of employee types, some of whom are all too happy to try to find loopholes. We aspire to a culture of common sense and responsibility and reasonable authority, but in practice, we have a range of folks with a range of skills and perspectives, which makes it tough to administer with few rules. I can see why it works at West Point, but West Point my company ain't! :) Have any thoughts on this?
Mike:
Great post. Here are my observations on this topic.
Most people understand why principles-based systems are superior to rules-based systems, yet many organizations continue to embrace the latter. In my area of governance, risk, compliance & ethics (GRC), this is a subject of much discussion/collective teeth gnashing.
I think most organizations embrace rules-based systems because these are perceived to be "easier" or "more precise" or "more protective" (i.e., see the comment above).
Yet it is virtually impossible to list all of the applicable "rules" and if you attempt to do so, it is literally a race to nowhere between you and your employees. As soon as you realize you "need" a rule (and thus create one), enterprising employees will go out and test its boundaries.
Example: my rule says that the company phone MUST be answered by the third ring. But what if the employee is prevented from answering by ring three, and answers by ring five instead, because the employee was on the line with a very important client? The discussion that would likely follow literal enforcement of the rule would be pretty silly, and at some point the exceptions to the rule may ultimately swallow it.
In my experience, principles-based systems can work but only if senior management is committed to training employees on company culture, expectations, etc. Large, complex organizations are particularly challenged due to the sheer number of people as well as generational/geographic differences in culture, values, and other variables, but even smaller organizations can fail unless the leadership is willing to communicate their expectations to their associates.
Whether you are trying to train someone on 180 different rules (most organizations could easily triple that number in a few days if they really thought about it), or just a handful of guiding principles, I believe that the leaders must talk about the guiding principles and why they are important to the organization's success. In other words, company culture will dictate whether the organization is ready for principles-based systems.
Sadly, many business leaders are "too busy" or believe that such matters are "common sense" and, thus, they either neglect to fulfill their duties in communicating the guiding principles or they fall back on the "easier" rules-based system (since such systems can be implemented and enforced by lower-level personnel).
@Anonymous – it’s a familiar problem. First, realize attorneys and insurance agents are paid to minimize/eliminate risk and responsibility. That means they’ll try to put in place as many protections as possible to prevent bad things from happening to your company. Given that, when they try putting things in place, ask what the risk is they’re mitigating, ask about the likelihood/impact of that risk, and help them understand the operational/leadership implications of putting a rule in place. If the operational/leadership problems it causes are greater than (likelihood * impact) then push back on the rule.
As far as people looking for loopholes, consider a few approaches:
– First, punish violators and make it clear that finding loopholes isn’t tolerated. If an individual continues to transgress, you have a candidate for being a cost reduction. Seriously – do you want people on your team who constantly look for ways to bend the rules?
– Second, focus on culture. If you have rule breakers, lay it on their conscience. “I expect better of you. You’re a better employee and person than that…” Also work on getting other employees bought into a guideline-based approach: “I’ll treat you like grown-ups and give guidelines if you prove that COLLECTIVELY you can follow them.” The collectively part enlists your guideline-followers to help police the guideline/rule breakers. Over time, hopefully your culture will shift.
These aren’t quick fixes and they’re not easy. But if the notion of a guideline-based organization is attractive to you, it’s worth the effort. Hope that helps.
@Jay – great perspectives. Thanks for taking the time to lay out such clear and lucid thoughts. Wanna write a guest post sometime? If so, drop me a line.
Mike,
I completely agree with organizations being run on principles rather than rules; that is how I try to live my life. But I feel that this approach requires a certain level of wisdom and self-control that makes this a difficult global practice. It’s like if you have a good manager they will understand when you did not meet all your specific goals for a year because something else happened that required your work. But you need specific goals so that when you have a bad manager you can show you met your specific goals when they try to nail you for an “error in judgment with minor effect.”
Our government is a good example of us choosing rules over guidelines though. We set up rules to keep the power of our leaders in check. It makes our democracy much less efficient than a monarchy, but it protects us from unwise kings.
Guidelines give you efficiency and flexibility, but rules protect you from risk. I believe there is a balance between rules and guidelines. To some things in leadership you should give strict rules (ex: follow all government regulations), but in others you should give guidelines (“Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.” – Patton). How do you find the balance?