Does your organization problem solve using value-based thinking or rule-based thinking?  Do you manage with rules or with values? 

When you are confronted with an HR issue, how do you figure out what to do?  Do you pull out the employee handbook and immediately check out the minute details of the rules?  Or do you assess the corporate values and then figure out the right thing to do?

From what I’ve seen handbooks are usually made up of rules – rules about employee relations and how to communicate, rules governing time and how you spend your day, rules about workplace violence – the list goes on and on.

I don’t think this is the best solution. 

  • Too many rules create an environment that causes people to look for loopholes and challenge how far the rules can be bent. 
  • They are also reactive, usually put in place after some new issue cropped up, not proactive in guiding desired behavior. 
  • Rules break down to can and can’t and leave no room for thinking about what you should or shouldn’t do. 
  • Rules are uninspiring and stifling.  You follow them and do nothing more and the result is no creativity in problem solving.  They don’t provoke thought in determining what is right or wrong according to corporate values.

 

Don’t get me wrong, for the most part I am a rule-follower.  I just favor an approach that is based on doing the right thing and aligns with a value system rather than behavior.  If the values are in place, proper behavior follows.

What if your handbook was a set of values?  Instead of paging through it to see what we are told to do in a given situation, what if we were encouraged to ask ourselves, “What is the right thing to do?”

Is it inconceivable to lay out a set of values and then trust people to use them to guide their behavior?  (As I’ve mentioned, I tend to be idealistic.)  Doesn’t it make more sense to have a collective group who share the same values rather than a group who uses the same handbook? 

What about you?  Are you given the ability to consider what’s right when you manage?  Or do you have a list of cans and can’ts that you follow?