No Rules

Working with entrepreneurs to build new professional services firms is extremely gratifying. My favorite part of supporting and enabling founders is providing advice that runs counter to conventional wisdom. It seems to be axiomatic that as an organization grows it needs more rules and policies to control employee behavior. We reject that idea and fight to limit the number and scope of policies designed to control what people do. Entrepreneurial professionals thrive with a high degree of autonomy and flexibility.

It’s not that we don’t have specific ideas about what people should be doing and how we expect them to behave in any given situation, we simply communicate those things through norms and expectations. If you carefully craft a culture that values people who think like owners, then you do not need to prescribe their every move. When asked what the rule is we say, “make good decisions.”

Some people will beg for greater clarity and documented policies. They want to be told what to do and are anxious about making a bad decision. It might just be that those are the wrong type of people for a start-up professional services firm. We grew our last firm to 300 people with a four-page employee handbook. Everyone knew what was expected of them and the culture was strong enough that the organization policed itself. It was not an anarchist free-for-all. The team members knew what to do.

My advice is to resist the temptation to tell your people how to think. Celebrate the fact that you do not need rules and seek to attract people that will succeed in that type of environment. We should not have to “manage” professionals. Provide them with strong leadership and remind them that “we are trying to accomplish something.”