Александр Высоцкий - Small business. Big game

The second reason why introducing new rules causes employee dissent is more complicated, and it involves people's yearning for self-expression. Everyone yearns for self-expression. If someone senses an effort to restrict him in this, he perceives it as an attempt to undermine his individuality.

As a result, imposing rules may indeed seem to conflict with freedom of self-expression, but this is not the case. Everyone experiences the urge to become a member of a team, to collaborate with others. One of the greatest pleasures that a person experiences in life is cooperative activity and communication with others. If a person is cut off from communication with others for some reason, he or she suffers. This is why one of the most severe punishments inflicted on criminals is isolation from society, the extreme measure of which is solitary confinement. From childhood on, we are surrounded by friends and classmates; we become members of clubs and engage in group activities with like-minded people. This makes for a full life. Most people have the urge to belong to a group, and not only as observer’s, but also as participant’s who make a valuable contribution. This is also part of self-expression. If this role is missing from a person’s life, he most likely will feel.

So there is no contradiction between consciously accepting some restrictions as a member of a group and expressing one’s own individuality. These are two natural impulses, ones present in every person. If he does not obey the rules of a team game, he will be unable to achieve self-expression as a team member. Therefore, everyone tries to maintain some sort of balance between these aspects of life.

A problem arises only when some person does not want to be a member of a team, and then he perceives any rules of a game as a restriction of the manifestation of his individuality. Conscious acceptance of rules is the necessary cost of participation in such a game. A member of a football team wears the same uniform as all the other players, and he is assigned a number to make him readily recognizable. This is similar to a loss of individuality, but, in fact, it is simply a means of his self-expression as a member of the group. And participating in this game gives him genuine satisfaction. Therefore, following rules that are truly intended to make a person successful in a group activity facilitates his self-expression, rather than restricting it. A real problem arises only when a person does not understand how these vital restrictive aspects of rules contribute to the activity of his entire group.

Disagreement with the rules arises either when the rules really do not facilitate the success of the activity or when employees simply do not understand why they are necessary, important, or reasonable. In both of these situations, the administration is in error, since in people management it should be understood that no matter why a rule is imposed, it is important to know what people think about it.

In my archives I recently came across one of the policies written fifteen years ago. It was a policy about discounts for customers. To be honest, when I read this document, I felt ashamed. There was not a single word in it about why this policy was even needed, what problems it addressed, or how it facilitated the work of the company. It is not surprising that in those days I experienced many difficulties as chief executive. It took a lot of effort to overcome employee disagreement with my instructions. If I, as a company employee, had received such a document imposing a new rule from the chief executive, I myself would have had a lot of questions and disagreements about it.

An unskilled manager can easily kill the spirit of the game just by the way he presents his instructions; rules may be fundamentally reasonable, but if they do not lead employees to understand how these rules facilitate the achievement of goals, people will perceive them as an encroachment on their personal freedom.

Governments have been extremely inept at this; they create laws for reasons that are often utterly unclear for those who are supposed to obey them. As a result, in order to achieve compliance with these laws, it is necessary to create a complex control mechanism and employ an entire army of bureaucrats to ensure that the laws are enforced. Such laws are an example of incompetent administration. After all, no one will dispute the requirements of the criminal code, and its use is obvious to every honest citizen. But with respect to tax law, there is no such unity, because there are many who do not approve of the way their tax money is spent.

Fortunately, everything is much simpler in business, and there are usually no such obstacles to creating rules that are reasonable and that help employees both to achieve self-fulfillment and to accomplish team goals. You could say that proper administration enables a person to maintain a balance between his capacity for self-expression as an individual and his self-expression as a member of a group, thereby making life more harmonious. A common error in this area is giving employees the impression that they work at the company only in order to earn money for a satisfying life.

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Policy – fundamental principles and guidelines in organizational management