Rules Should Not Apply

Some organizational rules are critically important to keeping people safe from harm. Organizational leaders should ensure these rules are always followed. Other organizational rules exist to help staff know what to expect and to keep operations running smoothly. Making project teams working on critical change initiatives follow these rules can often do more harm than good.

6 March 2024

One of the most common mistakes leaders make when trying to transform their organizations is tying their project team’s hands by forcing them to follow the same rules as everyone else in the organization. Rules exist to constrain people’s actions and maintain the status quo. Thus, forcing a project team to follow the same rules as everyone else inhibits the team’s ability to transform the organization and sends the message to the rest of the organization’s staff that the project team’s work and objectives are not all that important.

There are two primary reasons for organizations to have rules. The first reason is to keep staff from performing actions that could cause harm to themselves or others. Many rules of this type are codified in national and local regulations and include things like following proper protocols when performing hazardous tasks, wearing protective equipment in dangerous environments, and properly disposing of hazardous materials.

The second reason organizations have rules is to help staff know what to expect and ensure operations run smoothly. Rules of this type are typically not enforced by anyone outside the organization and often cover things like the proper protocols for getting items approved and timelines for submitting requests and getting activities completed.

Organizations need rules of both of the types discussed above to be successful. However, the first type of rules, those that keep people from being harmed, are much more important than the second type of rules. In fact, rules of the first type are so important that leaders of organizations should never allow them to be broken by anyone, regardless of the reason.

Rules of the second type are much less important than rules of the first type for the simple reason that breaking rules of the second type does not result in anyone being harmed, unlike what can happen when rules of the first type are broken. Breaking rules of the second type might result in people being inconvenienced or slightly annoyed, but no more significant harm than this should occur as a result of not following them.

While organizational leaders should never allow rules of the first type to be broken by anyone, for any reason, they should allow rules of the second type to be broken by project teams working on crucial organizational change initiatives.

There are two reasons project teams should be allowed to break the second type of organizational rules. The first reason is that such rules often get in the way of project teams successfully accomplishing important change initiatives. Rules about such things as chains of command for getting things approved, request processes, timelines for actions being completed, etc. often do nothing more than slow down project teams and hinder their ability to make timely and meaningful changes to an organization. Leaders who force project teams working on important change initiatives to follow such rules endanger the success of important projects.

The second reason project teams working on important change initiatives should not have to follow the second type of rules is that allowing such teams to break these rules sends a message to the organization about the importance of such projects. By allowing project teams to break rules of the second type, leaders are in essence telling the entire staff of the organization that the project the team is working on is more important than how the organization typically conducts business. This powerful message can greatly help critical change initiatives succeed by dramatically illustrating to all staff and stakeholders the level of importance of the project team’s work.

Some rules are more important than others. Rules designed to keep people from being seriously harmed are critically important and leaders should never let such rules be broken. Rules designed to make sure staff and stakeholders know what to expect and to help operations run smoothly are much less important, and leaders who force project teams working on critical change initiatives to follow such rules decrease the chances such initiatives will succeed and demonstrate to staff and stakeholders that such initiatives are of minimal importance.