Beyond the Rules
“Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.”
- Often attributed to Pablo Picasso
Barbara and I enjoy cooking together ... most of the time.
Sometimes ... alright, frequently ... she chides me for being "such a rule follower" because I stick pretty close to the recipe, measuring meticulously and carefully timing everything while she floats freely in and out of the pantry adding "some of this instead", estimating amounts based on ... apparently nothing ... and joyfully exploring the culinary art-of-the-possible.
I'm simply not experienced enough in food preparation to be comfortable freelancing much just yet. The recipe is my crutch - and my safe zone. In the kitchen, I'm bound by the rules. Barbara, on the other hand, has vast experience with recipes. She knows how and why they're written, then she gloriously defies them to produce something other than intended. In fact, sometimes she produces things beyond what the recipe creator might've ever imagined.
There's an old adage that "rules are made to be broken", and I believe there's a lot of truth to that, for a lot of reasons. But first, let's get something straight.
In defense of the rules
Subscribing to the philosophy that rules are made to be broken doesn't mean I have a complete disregard for rules - I don't. Every leader needs to be mindful of the governance, compliance and regulatory realities behind "the rules". These guidelines provide structure - boundaries - that keep people safe, level the playing field, maintain ethical standards and protect interests. Roads have painted lines designed to keep cars from running into each other, worksites have danger areas taped off in yellow and companies have hiring practices that ensure equal opportunity.
After all, rules are generally forged from the blood, sweat and tears of those who pioneered "making stuff happen" before we got here.
The Big Blue Sleeping Pill
In Navy aviation we flew by a set of rules called Naval Air Training and Operating Procedures Standardization. NATOPS was an ever-expanding set of rules for flyers, covered in blue and held together between two heavy sheets of cloudy plastic by long metal bolts. From the minute I started flight training it was drilled into my head that "NATOPS is written in blood", since every entry in the big blue book was there because someone had messed up something at some point in Navy aviation history. In fact, the advent of NATOPS is one of the key safety innovations, alongside such advancements as angled flight decks, on the Navy's path to killing fewer sailors while doing the inherently dangerous work of flying off ships.
Clearly, rules - policies, procedures, doctrines, guidelines, codes, etc.- are important to the recurring function of most organizations.
In Defiance of the Rules
Oh, but they can be frustrating, can't they; those pesky rules?
You want to hire that perfect job candidate but HR says they don't meet the "requirements" (whose requirements are they, anyway?).
The HOA stops by while you're putting up your flagpole to tell you it's not in "compliance".
You want to promote that hard-charging new teammate, but other teammates have been here longer and it's "policy" to promote them first.
In addition to our subjective frustration at rules, a close objective look reveals tangible cracks, flaws and limitations. Rules, policies, standard procedures ... all have some real issues:
Rules predetermine a static course of action in a dynamic world. No policy or rule can be written to apply to every possible situation, yet policy institutionally defends the status quo. At the speed science and technology change our lives and livelihoods, it's hard to imagine any policy lasting long. In fact, anachronistic rules are some of the most damaging to progress and success.
Rules tend toward obsolescence. They can quickly be "overcome by events" (OBE), out of touch with the latest industry trends, irrelevant or even flat out dangerous if not updated.
Rules are situational. They often don't take into account variations in the environment or changes in circumstances that might render them inappropriate or anachronistic.
Rules favor known outcomes over potential returns. Policies and standardized procedures can help enable targeted outcomes, but routes to other more beneficial solutions may never even be considered when rigidly following policy.
Rules can be myopic. A rule strictly observed in one part of the organization may cause second or third order effects in other parts detrimental to the organization's overall success.
Rules perpetuate flaws. This is perhaps the biggest problem with rules, especially now when science, technology and information change our concepts of freedom, fairness, success and prosperity at a blinding rate. When flawed rules are multiplied over and over again as they are followed daily across an enterprise, the effects can be hyperbolic.
Hey! It's not just me!
First, Break All the Rules, Gallup's book documenting the exhaustive research behind their Q12 engagement survey and one of the world's most referenced management sources, begins with:
“The greatest managers in the world do not have much in common ... But despite their differences, these great managers do share one thing: Before they do anything else, they first break all the rules of conventional wisdom.”
- Gallup (Buckingham & Coffman) - First, Break All the Rules
How many of the "rules" we swear by today will we look back on nostalgically, or perhaps regretfully, within just a few years? Smoking sections on airplanes? Male-only service academies? Antiquated interview protocols? I have a million of 'em.
Sometimes, rules really do need to be broken.
The Spirit and the Letter
It's also important and instructive to recognize the split personality of rules - the "spirit and intent" and the "letter." The former is based on WHY the rule was created in the first place, taking into account factors like context, chronology and convention. The latter, on the other hand, is a rigid interpretation of the rule as understood today. In my opening example, I followed the letter of the recipe, while Barbara understood the spirit and intent of it and deviated from the letter to produce a more desirable variation based on the ingredients she had on hand. In fact, had she not been knowledgeable and agile enough to be bold in this way, we'd have gone hungry since we didn't have the ingredients in the kitchen to cook to the letter.
No Fishing
NATOPS represented an extremely structured (and, in practice, very rigid) "letter" approach, with defined language describing degrees of compliance with the words "shall", "will" and "should". When debriefing a flight, there was never much tolerance for deviating from the letter to operate under the spirit and intent.
Operating under the letter is safe, but exploration under the spirit and intent is where all discovery originates. A bold leader's goal should be to lead like my wife Barbara cooks - understanding the recipe well enough to know when and how to depart from it.
“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
George Bernard Shaw - Man and Superman
While managers can be stuck with the processes and policies they're authorized to work under, effective leaders of a special kind - the bold ones - can protect their organizations from the negative effects of too heavy a reliance on policy and blind obedience to rules.
I've challenged many rules in my professional life; and when I did, one of two things happened:
I got schooled on exactly why the rule was a rule, broadening my professional horizon ... after, perhaps, a little professional embarrassment, or
I exposed a flawed policy - an outdated concept; an incomplete approach or a previously undetected or tolerated crack in the system that had never produced optimum results.
So, either I got smarter or we all got smarter together!
Of course, leading boldly is about much more than just breaking or bending the rules; but bold leaders will, at some point, face the need to act decisively when rules can no longer be relied upon to guide them to victory, or when situations arise for which a rule has yet to be written.
We'll be exploring some examples over the next several posts, and the no clichés podcast is now online with stories and interviews between posts. Listen in, then come on back and let me know what you think!
