Principles vs rules
We live by rules and principles daily. We modify our behaviour to work within (or outside of) them on a continual basis. On the surface, they both affect (or control) our actions. But there is a subtle and important difference between them.
Principles are: bought-into, believed-in, understood innately, interpreted individually (inclusive of individuality), lived, makes sense to the individual, congruent with individual and organisational goals.
Principles take effort and time to distil and uncover. Up-front effort is required from each individual understanding each principle and thus to buy-in or reject them. Buy-in means integrating a principle into the core of an individual’s being. It is about shared understanding, goals, and vision.
Principles lead to self-regulated, consistent and authentic behaviour. The individual is allowed to be truly themselves and to following in their own way the principles they have integrated; it is about “we are in this together working towards a shared ideal.” Principles are empowering and freeing.
Rules are: Enforced (by threats or rewards), imposed, centralised interpretation, followed/towed (mechanically), not necessarily understood (and if so, only cognitively), usually does not make sense to individuals (excludes any individuality), often has no obvious bearing on individual or organisational goals.
Rules require little effort to devise and put in place. It is in essence answering the questions: “What do we want them to do?” and ”How can we make them do it?” There is a clear “us” vs “them”, or “boss” vs “unworthy workers” mentality.
Rules require lots of top-down behavioural monitoring and enforced behavioural modification. It does not matter whether individuals get what the rules are for; as long as they get the consequences for breaking them.
Rules lead to policy-dictated, unthinking and fake clone behaviours. Rules are limiting and diminish our humanity.
Example of a principle:
Our organisation is about helping our clients succeed. Our people are selected for their ability to empathise with our clients, and to work genuinely towards their success. We trust our people to exercise the correct judgement in terms of their effort and resource use to look after our clients. Our clients’ success matters the most.
Example of a rule:
Our organisation is about helping our clients succeed. Although we select our people based on their ability to work genuinely towards our clients’ success; we still need to control and monitor what they do. We can’t have them spend more than the allocated time or resources with each client. They need to clock their time with us every day and justify every overspend. Following the rules matters the most.
Principles are about trust, respect, empowerment, and togetherness. Principles underlie the new world of authentic business and personal engagement with the world. An organisation held together by shared principles is free to focus on customers with integrity and generosity.
Rules are about fear- or ego-driven control, disempowerment, meanness, and distrust. They gum up an organisation with the molasses of internal bureaucracy and punitive actions. Rules are the business-as-usual way of limiting the ability of an organisation to fully engage with customers.
A principles-based contract is short and succinct, and opens the business relationship to all possible opportunities.
A rules-based contract is long and tedious, and steeps the business relationship in fear, distrust, and potential punitive actions.
Are you into principles or rules?
Possibly Related Posts
6 comments on “Principles vs rules”
Leave a Comment
Noticeboard
Buy my book - 30% off and free shipping within Australia; 15% off and free shipping worldwide!
Are you a solopreneur doing it on your own? Read my articles on Flying Solo.
My evolving Squidoo lenses summarise the key themes and thinking behind my work.
Follow me on twitter.
Visitor locations: click for details.
Who said a business needs to be either completely based on principles or rules? This is a silly topic because businesses should be run both based on principles and rules. Any business that thinks it needs to choose one or the other should not really be in business.
I would think that if everyone in an organisation gets the core principles, there would be no need for rules. Imagine the savings on time spent policing rules and doling our punitive actions.
Perhaps there are two sorts of people - those who prefer to work under “loose” core principles whereby they can be innovative and self-directed when meeting each goal; and those who prefer to be told exactly what to do when so there is no need to think or question too much…
Core principles are usually based on cultural and society values and norms. And this may be all good to follow principles only if a company is only one office where there is a good communication climate. How would a company that is based in a number of countries be able to follow the same core principles when each country may have different business environments or values and norms?
Zern,
the company I work for - SMS Management and Technology - has three core principles. Everything we do derives from those three - and they work well. If it doesn’t fit these three principles, then it isn’t us and so it isn’t done.
To address Chenge’s point - we’ve offices in Singapore and London as well as throughout Australia. Last I heard we had nearly 1,000 employees and were still Australia’s largest publicly listed management services company. Principles can work if you work them.
Cheers, Andrew
Principles can be defined as tightly or as loosely as you want. And I would contend that they can cross cultural boundaries.
Think the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Example of a principal: We will act respectfully towards each other and clients. Thus in the Beijing office, “acting respectfully” may actually manifest differently than in the London office. And that is ok. The principle allows individuals to act to the best of their abilities and appropriate to their immediate social context.
Had this been a rule: We will always maintain constant eye contact and shake hands firmly; the point of the rule (ie be respectful) will be opaque to those in the Beijing office and the whole thing will backfire.
—-
Andrew, would you be able to share your three principles? It sounds really great that they work for your organisation!
[...] The recent terrorist attacks in the UK made me think of my post on principles vs rules. [...]