Some rules are critical. A surprising number are not. Accumulating like driftwood over time, they are mere safety blankets for the terminally bureaucratic.
Game-changing organisations like Tesla and Pixar are at the vanguard of a new generation of businesses ditching rules and challenging norms on every front. In place of procedure, these new leaders believe in continual debate and a never-ending ‘norm’ of innovation.
So what advantages exist for those courageous enough to challenge existing rules? Here are 5:
1. Speed
Rules entail processes that have to be followed. Each may take a small amount of time, but pile rule upon the rule and even a simple procedure can become an unreasonably slow process. The slower things happen, the greater the total lethargy.
Sometimes useful things are not allowed to happen at all, because a rule flat-out prevents them from being done. Other times, a useful idea can’t get to market quickly enough. It took Google two years to get all the vetting they needed from Legal and Marketing to release Google+. By then, Facebook had such a critical mass that their product’s excellent compliance didn’t matter.
2. Willingness
When simple acts are slow to do because of the burden of procedures, the willingness to do them drops. People perceive that going above and beyond is too much trouble. They are trained and conditioned to actively reduce their contribution.
3. The burden of frustration
With decreased speed and increased procedures, the word ‘no’ is heard so often it becomes a form of cultural conditioning. ‘No’, applied often, trains away initiative and propensity for risk-taking. ‘No’ starts to become normative. It becomes your organisation’s default setting.
4. Mistrust
The greater the weight of the rules, the more you need people watching people, in order to enforce those rules. In an ideal organisation, where people are trustworthy and operate in a high-trust environment, you require only one person to police each person: themselves. Hierarchy becomes zero-sum and need not accumulate. Utopian? It can be done.