Many rules were originally created for quality and productivity control in order to improve people’s effectiveness and efficiency. Over a period of time organizations started losing common sense and started focusing on processes over people. The levels of trust dropped and with that productivity, innovation, and joy of working went down.
Instead of being in control by treating employees as adults and providing them boundaries of engagement to operate within, managers started controlling through irrelevant monitoring and control pushing the attention of employees away from the real job.
While some rules are essential, most require to be re-looked in the organization.
Here are some rules for you to reflect upon whether you are trying to be in-control or controlling.
| Work Timings | Tied to outcome or time spent at work |
| Dress Code | Appropriate but individual’s choice or detailed dos and don’ts |
| Appraisal | Individual contribution-based or relative to others |
| Project Spend Decision | At discretion based on boundaries or requires levels of approvals |
| Delivery | Agile or Rigid process based |
| Meetings | Solution searching or Fault finding based |
| Root Cause Analysis | What went wrong or Who to blame? |
What would you like to add to this list?
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