Rules and procedures are a funny thing. They are used to define decisions, responses, and actions for a defined situation. The intent is to drive consistent, and planned processes. If you could create procedures and processes that cover all possible situations, then your results would be 100% consistent. Also, if correctly designed, your results would achieve 100% of your goal.
But can your procedures cover 100% of the possibilities? I think it depends on the scope of the operation you want to control. Two things I have been pondering about rules and procedures.
First, a person that is instructed to follow procedures without questioning or thinking loses all responsibility for the outcome of the situation. The outcome becomes the responsibility of the person or group that created the rules.
Second, if you want your employees, organization, or team to just follow the procedures, couldn’t they all be replaced by robots and computers? What value does a human provide in a situation?
These questions apply to current events every day. United’s procedures for handling planes with more passengers than seats revealed major flaws in the last few weeks. Employees followed the procedures, but the outcome was not what United would have desired. Could this disaster have been avoided if people were given the ability to override the procedure? Maybe.
We can also look at the rising use of automation, such as Tesla’s self-driving cars. Should a human play any part in driving or control? Or would we prefer to put 100% of the responsibility on the developers of the software and hardware that control the driving?
I think these two examples represent many issues we will face over the next fifty years. It is important that we think about how we want humans to add value, and how much control we are willing to put into procedures, rules, robots, and automation. Are there limits?