The 7 Day Rule

It is a well-known truth and commonly held fact that RULES are fundamental to anchoring a culture and preserving a form of behavioral conformity that keeps employees just to the right of the insane equation in organizational life.

Rules, for the most part, are the result of at least two unexpected forms of behavior that no one anticipated (i.e. crossing the street in the middle of traffic, not texting while driving) and try to minimize before the behavior becomes a pattern and the pattern becomes NORMAL.

The hope being to eliminate the more dire consequences that occur if the rule did not exist.

The quickest path to legitimizing a RULE is for it to move through organizational channels to be sanctioned by a mysterious, but powerful internal entity. The RULE then becomes a standard tool for keeping behavior from getting out of hand and adding a layer of responsibility to those in positional roles of leadership.

When we can point to a place in a long-forgotten manual or a paragraph on a website, the authenticity of the RULE’s existence is given the highest level of validation because, IT IS WRITTEN and so it is TRUE! The validation is usually followed by a loud clap of thunder, two bolts of lightning and a downpour just as a finalizing, beyond questioning exclamation point.

So, the importance of valid RULES within organizational work settings, are met with a certain level of passive acceptance because employees do buy-in to the sense of order needed to offset individual disorder. As long as it’s not too confining or too punitive, (there is a generation of baby-boomers who remember getting in trouble in elementary school for going ‘up the down staircase’) and subject to vanish as society evolves. RULES are supposed to serve an organizational purpose.

However, if you spend enough time cruising the cubed corridors of contemporary organizations, what starts to happen is an internal social and cultural complexity that moves faster than functional response time.

Things happen fast and with no valid rule in place to address the emerging nuances. For leaders trying to cope with the multitude of changes that occur within the workforce, it becomes challenging trying to find a RULE or RULES that have direct application for the individual variations.

So, survival dictates that rules are then made up or pulled out of thin air to accommodate the unexpected and bring some immediate order to an already stressful situation.

Organizational leaders have a little known, seldom discussed area of influence called ‘discretion’ and as such, don’t have access to Robert’s RULES of Order so they tend to rely on Norbert’s RULES of Order, while loosely translated means, “make it up and hope no one questions its authenticity!’.

There is an area in psychology in which obedience is seen as the natural response to any articulated RULE! The thinking being that as a species, for the most part, we like having RULES!

However, during the moments of uncertainty as to a RULE’S validation, it’s okay to say, “Wow, I didn’t know about that rule. Can you show me where it is written down?”

Leaders often encounter this level of resistance from employees who are determined not to disrupt their pattern of work or who just don’t want to perform a certain task.

The RULE then comes out in articulated authority and, because it sounds right, goes unchallenged.

The rebuke, stated respectfully and preserving the employee’s dignity has to be, “You are probably right, but I’d like you to take the next 7 days to find where that rule is written and email the passage to me.”

At the end of 7 days, if I haven’t heard from you, I will assume the rule no longer exists and will, thus, create a rule to support your need for a rule.” When you have their attention, then “The RULE going forward is STOP MAKING UP RULES!”

Connect with me on LinkedIn at https://www.dhirubhai.net/in/meadowslee/

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