Bad Rules?

image: https://pixabay.com/photos/life-rules-book-rules-of-life-2643192/

What should we do with bad rules?

If you added up all of the rules you are subject to during your life they would likely fill a three-hundred page book (and that's NOT counting the Apple User Agreement...)

If we distilled all of those rules down to the really necessary ones, you could fit them all on one page. But instead, we face volumes and volumes of rules written by other people who have only THEIR interests in mind, who do not consult us on our preferences, and who expect to enforce those rules as if they were the Ten Commandments.

What do you think of that?

The other day an organization that was interested in influencing me listed a set of rules so arcane, so arduous, and so mean that I couldn't even READ them all (without gagging) much less agree to them. Where does that arrogance come from? What makes people think that other people will adhere to such one-sided rules?

Doesn't that make it harder to defend the rules that DO make sense? If we confront people with enough stupid and one-sided rules they will find ways to bend and break them AT WILL.

It will take more than an article or a day to fix this (maybe a lifetime?) but let's start with this: As highly participative, facilitative, high-performance leaders let's vow not to impose any more one-sided unfriendly and unfair rules on the people we interact with.

I'm in. How about you?

-- doug smith

Comments

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