Do you ever think that some rules are a little counter-productive? We took my daughter to hospital yesterday for a bit of a niggly teenage injury. The consultant discharged her because the measures being taken seemed to be working. He said that even if recovery wasn’t as swift as possible then it would be better to go back to the GP for another referral. It was likely she would be seen more quickly than if she was already in the system; the hospital gets more money for new referrals. I can see that the government wants to encourage a degree of results focus but since new referrals are easier to measure than ongoing snags that’s where the actual focus is.
At a recent coaching get-together a neuroscientist lecturing us relayed a story of how she was asked to review a company’s teaching materials. Before she’d looked at them she blithely mentioned how utterly rubbish it was that some people tried to teach this particular course through an on-line ‘course’. She then realized that that was exactly what the company was doing. I offered that perhaps they were just trying to ‘tick the relevant boxes’. This comment drew a certain amount of teeth sucking…but it was probably true. The government laid down guidelines about what ought to be taught and companies up and down the country are complying with the letter of the law in the cheapest way possible.
In the sitcom Yes Minister, Jim Hacker MP was berating Sir Humphrey Appleby, the civil servant, for fiddling the statistics. Sir Humphrey’s answer was, “But Minister, you asked us to reduce the numbers. So we have reduced the numbers.”
It is said that rules and laws are there to protect the privileged from the great unwashed. I often wonder if rules, as they are framed, are an indication of how the person setting the rule realizes he would behave if he was in that position and behaving badly; they project their own worst behaviour onto others. The Neuro Linguistic Programming world calls it ‘perception projection’. “If we don’t have a rule about that they’ll behave like….”
Do you know anyone who does that? Do you do it yourself? Think of the rules you’ve been fettered by. If you’ve felt unnecessarily restricted or distrusted just imagine how others feel if you set rules for them based on your worst behaviour rather than your best.
A team with a focus doesn’t need rules because everyone will bring their best talents to the process. If they’re told how they should behave they’ll do the minimum to meet the ‘requirement’.
Whilst rummaging around for linked thoughts I came across David Gardiner’s ‘Thought for the week’. Have a look at the link. Also please feel free to comment at Inflow Performance FB page or on the group page Breaking Free. And if you have time have a look at the website.