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Team Building: The Headache of Policies and Procedures
By harveyrobbins | September 24, 2007
There is nothing wrong with the idea of policies and procedures. But they should be guidelines, helpful ideas to turn to in time of doubt - not a needle’s eye to squeeze the actual corporation through. Ideally, we should see them as snapshots that fade over time. Instead, we have paper Stonehenges that never go away.
At the bottom of every page in the binder you’ll see one of two dates. There’s an “effective” date, which is often something from the twilight of cooperate time, like 1/1/68. And there’s the “revision” date, something only a little less antediluvian, like 9/30/72.
What I’d like to propose, is a third date - an “expiration” date. After 1/1/2004, the idea goes bye-bye, unless consciously reimbued with life. Every idea, every policy, every procedure, should be reviewed every tow to three years. Modify and extend those that deserve it, and deep-six the remainder - particularly if you notice team members systematically going around a procedure to do their jobs, a sure sign of a procedure that should not be.
Remember that it’s easier to ask for forgiveness than for permission. More good things happen when you are willing to bend the rules.
Sometimes, of course, the perfect solution for too many rules is a nice roaring fire. This is essentially what happened in two big American car success stories of the last decade, Ford Taurus and GM Saturn. For and GM looked at the baseline, decided it was too screwed-up to build upon, and so built entirely new divisions, making a fresh, honest start in the policies and procedures area. The fresh start gave both of these “Skunkworks” projects terrific vitality, and a head start toward success.
Policies and procedures are supposed to serve the team, not the other way around.
Topics: Team Building At Work |
September 28th, 2007 at 3:19 am
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