Updated August 14, 2020
Workplace rules are generally instituted for one of two reasons.
The first reason is there was an incident where something went wrong and management wants to make sure it doesn't happen again. The second reason is management anticipates something will go wrong if they don't create a rule.
I saw this sign in the men's restroom at one of my client's offices, but couldn't bring myself to ask why this rule was deemed necessary. Was there an incident?!
It's a good idea to have a few good rules, but something weird happens when we get too many.
We suddenly lose the ability to think for ourselves. We forget what we're supposed to be doing in the first place and spend our time trying to be compliant (or avoiding trouble for non-compliance). We get paralyzed with indecision when we encounter a situation that isn't covered by a rule.
In short, we get dumb.
Consider the sign above. Why would anyone drink from the toilet?! And let’s say someone really was tempted. Would the warning about reclaimed water be enough to dispel the notion?
Here’s a more realistic example.
A supervisor I work with recently told me that he wished his employees would stop passing the buck to him all the time and start making more decisions for themselves. When I observed this team I realized they had a rule, regulation, or policy for nearly everything they did. These employees were so used to being governed by rules that their only solution for something out of the ordinary was to pass it along to the boss. And what did the boss do? Make up a new rule!
Yes, we still need a few rules, but less is more.
Here’s an amazing story from The Service Culture Handbook. The phone systems went down at a company called Rackspace, a company that provides computer hosting for thousands of business customers.
A lone technical support agent sprang into action. He tweeted his personal phone number, letting customers know they could reach him directly if they needed help. Soon other tech support reps followed suit and tweeted their numbers, too. For the next four hours, they used Twitter and their cell phones to serve customers until Rackspace restored its phone service. The support team typically handles a thousand calls during a four-hour time frame, so their extraordinary service prevented a lot of unhappy customers.
The stakes were high, but nobody from management told these employees to tweet their personal phone numbers. It wasn't part of a carefully scripted procedure. No one even asked permission. They just did it.
My favorite part about the story is there wasn’t a rule that guided these employees’ actions. But they did have something else that influenced them. It was this customer service vision, called the Fanatical Support Promise:
We cannot promise that hardware won't break, that software won't fail, or that we will always be perfect. What we can promise is that if something goes wrong, we will rise to the occasion, take action, and help resolve the issue.
I’ve created this resource page to help you learn more about creating a customer service vision for your team. You can find more examples and get my step-by-step guide to writing your own.