Rules versus Principles

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Rules are complicated, typically long and boring, often legal in nature, and easily forgotten.

Rules cause “this is the way we have always done it” and, “that’s against the rules” - so let’s hide in mediocrity behind them.

A few values and guiding principles are hard to forget, inspire the good and creative in all of us, and don’t come with the expense of having a lawyer review them.

It really comes down to what you want? Limitations or inspirations? Rules or values?

“Tell Me and I Forget; Teach Me and I May Remember; Involve Me and I Learn.” -Benjamin Franklin

You might need another boat.

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You have a goal. Everyone is pointed at it. Everyone is rowing their butts off, together, to get there.

Except.

Someone keeps rethinking the destination. Goes on day excursions to other destinations.

They zig and zag when everyone is running in a straight line.

They keep throwing the shiny object up in the air.

That constant tug of misdirection can pull you into a circle, or if left unchecked could put you into a spiral circling the drain.

Everyone pulls together or someone gets put into another boat.

80/20 Rules versus Made Up Crap

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Do the 20% that delivers 80% of the result. Measure. Adjust. Do it again.

Do not tackle 100% of what must be done in some random order, or, even worse, spend far too much time documenting 125% of what could be done because you have overthought and over engineered some made up problems that you imagine might need to be solved.

OR

Deliver the 20% that has 80% of the results and don’t bother measuring and learning and never come back to improve upon what you have done and deliver the rest.

Both the 125% list and 20% hit and run are useless. You might as well not even bother. You are wasting time and money.

Deliver in small batch increments doing the highest impact to effort ratio work first. Measure the results. Adjust. And for damn sure repeat.