Rules

Leaders have a myriad of responsibilities in their organizations. Predominantly the focus is on the primary managerial outcomes: profits, revenues, mission achievement and other objectives. Leaders know they cannot reach their goals without paying attention to the human and behavioral outcomes in the organization. That is, the leader needs to guide his or her behaviors, actions and decisions toward improvements in job satisfaction, productivity and citizenship behavior; simultaneously, these actions and behaviors may also serve to reduce or diminish turnover, absences and workplace deviance.² One of the dilemmas of leadership is the placement of boundaries or the establishment of rules and procedures with the key question being how much to proceduralize the work that is done in the organization.

Effective management of an organization requires the act of "organizing, planning, decision-making, controlling and leading." ^{1 (p. 8)} Without adequate handling of these variables the organization becomes inefficient and ineffective. Effective management serves as the platform on which leadership is built. If the platform is not solid, then leaders will spend too much time on management issues (e.g. human resources and perhaps EEO issues) and less time on implementing change (the primary function of a leader). One challenge that leaders and managers must grapple with is the degree of infrastructure and rules that must be established to provide an underpinning for efficiency and effectiveness. 

It is common for inexperienced leaders and managers to establish too many rules, but there is a point at which the rules and procedures become counterproductive. Once the workers perceive that there are too many conventions to follow, they are likely to "shut down" because a belief is formed that they are unable to meet the requirement and they might think, “Why bother?” I recall my first managerial experience running an ice cream store (early undergraduate years) and how rigid I was with the workers. While few would disagree with procedures I enacted, the way I imposed the requirements caused a revolt among the workers; they all felt restricted and objectified. No leader wants this type of reaction. Leaders must recognize that there is a tension between the level of needed rules versus allowances for the degree of independence, autonomy and freedoms workers desire on the job. Worker motivation is expected to increase as the level of autonomy increases.²

The question remains to what degree should there be set procedures. Without rules, the ice cream store would probably be about as clean as a dorm room -- not an inviting image. Still, how many and what procedures need to be in place? There is no firm guideline to answer this question, but leaders must work at it.

One of the answers may come from the purposes of the organization and the type of work performed. The management literature identifies two behavioral models in organization design. The first, System 1, is characterized as a top-down "rigid and inflexible"^{1 (p. 374)} approach to business management. It focuses on the task of the organization to the exclusion of the human factors that are often deemed important for leading effectively; it is inward-focused and may even view employees as machines. There is a certain narcissism associated with this kind of organization -- the top leaders may think they have all of the answers … and they behave that way. This model might also appear in a manufacturing environment or in high-performance work where a single deviation from an established pattern can prove disastrous (surgical team or airline flight deck).¹

A System 4 design is nearly the opposite in that it is focused on the people and the task. It is characterized by inclusion and engages workers in an innovative process; it is an inclusive environment and views workers as individuals and partners.¹ In this kind of organization, goals are often set collectively, which breeds commitment, acceptance and support. The Facebook organization is an exemplar of this model, almost out of necessity, because it requires the generation of new ideas to sustain itself.³  They use frequent brainstorming sessions to listen and gather thoughts. "Most such 'hackathons' last a day... [and] Zuckerberg says about 40 ideas emerged from the [December 2014] event."^{3 (p. 48)}

From a leader’s perspective, the question still remains about how many rules and procedures to enforce. If a leader adopts too few, then chaos might reign and the leader loses control over the business environment. Alternatively, more rules increase the level of control and may restrict the freedoms (autonomy and independence) that are motivational to many workers.² Innovation also decreases.

This – like other choices of leader effectiveness – is among the more vital because of its direct impact on the managerial outcomes. Leaders face a variety of dilemmas in leading others – too little and too much can overpower and be harmful.

Please feel free to make comments.

References

1 Griffin, R.W. (2011). Management (10th ed.). Mason, OH: South-Western Cengage Learning.

2 Robbins, S., & Judge, T. (2013). Organizational Behavior (15th ed.). Boston: Pearson.

3 Stone, B., & Frier, S. (2014). “Facebook's Next Decade.” Bloomberg Businessweek magazine (Feb. 3-9, 2014), pp. 44-49.