Hiring adults, managing children?

by

Nudge-Letter May 2026

You’ve seen this before

You hire experienced people. Then your policies tell them when to come, how to spend, what to approve. – Within weeks – Decisions shrink. – Energy drops. – Initiative disappears. Nothing dramatic. Just a slow shift: Thinking → Asking | Owning → Complying And everyone gets comfortable with it.

What’s really happening

Policies replace judgment with compliance. Every exception becomes a rule.

One deviation → new restriction → everyone constrained. Judgment gets outsourced to forms, approvals, “process”.
Policies should be guardrails. Instead, they control behavior. You don’t scale trust. You scale control.

A Case In Point

High-performing organisations rely less on rules. They rely more on context and judgment. While most companies add controls as they grow, some remove them. Case in point: Netflix One principle:“Act in the best interest of Netflix’s.”
It applies to:
  • Vacations,
  • Expenses
  • Work
almost everything. Radical? Maybe. Effective? Absolutely. They didn’t get there overnight. They got there one process at a time, building the muscle to let go of control, trust people, learn, and iterate. It’s worth trying.
Not by copying the “principle” but experimenting with the approach.

More from our “Nudge” series

Illusion of Alignment

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Taming the red tape

Bureaucracy thrives on the status quo. Taming corporate bureaucracy's red tape is the only way organizations can build a culture of innovation and agility.

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Recommeded Read

"No Rules Rules"

A book by Reed Hastings and Erin Meyer
Find the book here.

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Coming up…

Our flagship program, “Semco Style Expert ” is coming up in August.
If you are a practising OD, Agile , business transformation consultant, and believe that work-culture is what differentiates great companies from the rest, Click here and book your seat today.

Try This

Run a Rule Safari this week. Invite volunteers from across the org to go hunting to list: – What slows things down? – What doesn’t make sense? – What could be removed? Consider impact. Pick one. Slowing things down? Simplify. Doesn’t make sense? Challenge. No longer needed? Remove. Don’t overthink. Watch what happens. If nothing breaks, you’ve learned something. Do it again, periodically. Make this a habit, not a project.

What Shifts

You get,
  • Fewer, clearer policies.
  • Processes that actually make sense and work.
  • Less noise. Fewer exceptions. Less overhead.
Ownership increases—because they shaped the rules. People don’t become irresponsible. They become visible. Good judgment shows up. So does poor judgment. The organization runs with people—not on policies. That’s where real performance begins.

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More from our “Nudge” series

Illusion of Alignment

Alignment is important, not just at the strategic level but also in the execution. Read on to see how you can safeguard yourself from the illusion and fix it in time.

From our “Impact Stories” section

Taming the red tape

Bureaucracy thrives on the status quo. Taming corporate bureaucracy's red tape is the only way organizations can build a culture of innovation and agility.

Coming up…

Our flagship program, “Semco Style Expert Certification” is coming up in August.
If you are a practising business transformation, OD, Agile consultant, and believe that work-culture is what differentiates great companies from the rest, this is for you. Click here to get more details.