No doubt it’s happened to you at some point in your career. You took action on something with good intentions, only to be chastised later because you crossed some invisible boundary and violated an unwritten rule.
Hopefully your experience was not terminal, but such things can often become proverbial albatrosses around the necks of once promising employees. Because of their initiative and assertiveness they are labeled by those who neglected to write down the alleged rule as problem employees who reach beyond their authority to do things without following the proper channels. A label that can last a very long time.
Think about it. Does anyone come to mind? A once promising employee who suddenly seems to have stopped in mid-step due to a slight mis-step in an area they were never warned about. Or maybe you remember a new Board member who reached a little too far or questioned a little too much in their early days on the Board who continues to pay the price.
The simple fact is that most organizations have unwritten rules that impact how people within the organization see others. In some cases these are beneficial, but in many cases they are detrimental–even though the adverse impacts are seldom discussed.
All of this was brought home recently by a situation a colleague of mine shared. She was working with a team of relatively new-hires in a credit union who had been tasked with planning an event for their members. Their assignment was clear: create an event that involved people from all levels of the credit union and the board with members in a fun way to strengthen member loyalty and build a stronger team.
While facilitating the session with the team they settled on a plan of action that included naming various teams to handle the various tasks that needed to be done. The plan was polished and shared with the rest of team.
The result? A powerful, and relatively negative, pushback from those at higher levels of the organization.
The problem? A perception that those who reported to them were usurping their authority by assigning them to task teams for the event.
The impact? A great deal of unnecessary bickering, complaining, and attacking of a group of well intentioned employees who were doing what they had been told to do.
The root cause? A culture where some rules are clearly unwritten, but deadly.
The cure? Look at all areas of your operation and strive to remove any unwritten, but deadly, rules that exist. Use these simple criteria to decide your course of action:
1. If the currently unwritten rule should be eliminated, communicate that to everyone and stop allowing it to impact people’s behavior adversely.
2. If the currently unwritten rule is truly important and needed, write it down and make it real to everyone, then treat everyone equally with regard to it.
3. If you encounter any written rules that should be eliminated, remove them immediately.
Sounds simple, doesn’t it? And it will work. The fact is that today’s employees want to be empowered to act and will do so if they know there are no hidden barriers awaiting them. Such ‘unwritten, but deadly’ rules are the types of barriers that help no one and hurt everyone. Strive to eliminate them today!
