How (15 page)

My central conflict with rules lies in the essential nature of our relationship to them;
rules live outside of us
. Because of this, we spend a lot of time and effort wrestling with them, trying to find ingenious ways around them or creative ways of living within them. No one internalizes the tax code, not even the accountants who make their living interpreting it. Human beings are natural problem solvers and enjoy the challenge of puzzles. We will always invent new loopholes, and no rule can govern all the cracks.

Time spent dancing with the rules builds muscles of mental agility, cleverness, and ingenuity—Just Do It muscles, and the time of Just Do It has passed. Dancing with the rules turns you into a legal technician, constantly looking for loopholes. Some even think that breaking all the rules qualifies as creative thinking, but it is quite the opposite.
Working in opposition to rules is simply the negative space of working within them
; thinking just in terms of what a rule excludes is as limiting as being bound by what it includes. Too much time spent in the realm of law limits truly creative thought.

An excess of rules breeds an environment where we are less conscious about what is right. We become dependent on the rule book to govern our behavior. Where no rule exists—in those gray areas that we come up against every day—we sometimes feel we can do what we like. “If it mattered,” we think, “they would have made a rule.” Overreliance on rules also tempts people to play close to the edge. “How close can I go?” we wonder. We focus on exactly where the rule is and try to toe the line without exceeding its limits. When the wind blows, however, and conditions change, we can easily find ourselves on the wrong side of things, paying a stiff price. When the chairman of the board of Hewlett-Packard (HP), Patricia Dunn, resigned in the wake of the scandal created by her decision to authorize electronic surveillance of other board members, the
Los Angeles Times
reported that “she was not concerned that anything illegal was taking place because HP lawyers were overseeing the investigation.”
⁹
Meanwhile, Kevin Hunsaker, an HP senior counsel and ethics officer, was trading the following e-mails with HP security manager Anthony Gentilucci, who was overseeing a team of private investigators performing the investigation:

From: Kevin Hunsaker

To: Anthony Gentilucci

Hi Tony. How does Ron get cell and home phone records? Is it all aboveboard?

From: Anthony Gentilucci

To: Kevin Hunsaker

The methodology used is social engineering. Investigators call operators under some ruse to obtain the call record over the phone. The operator shouldn’t give it out, and that person is liable in a sense. I think it’s on the edge, but aboveboard.

From: Kevin Hunsaker

To: Anthony Gentilucci

I shouldn’t have asked.
¹⁰

Leaders must be rigorous about the truth, but Dunn and her HP colleagues got so wrapped up in what they
could
or
could not
do that they lost track of what they
should
or
should not
do; they lost track of “The HP Way,” the values that had built the company and made it strong and unique.

Human conduct is more complicated than what the language of law can describe. Human conduct, in its infinite variety and creativity, defies reduction. It has a lot to do with aspirations and intentions, with back-and-forth interactions. Our interpersonal synapses are two-way streets, and the interactions that travel through them are dynamic. Rules, because they are made reactively, have difficulty keeping up with the infinite permutations and various shades of meaning that pass between people in the course of life.

THE PROBLEMS WITH RULES

RULES ARE EXTERNAL

They are made by others.

They present us with a puzzle to be solved and loopholes to be found.

WE ARE AMBIVALENT ABOUT RULES

We know we need some and we want others to play by them, but we say, “Rules are meant to be broken.”

RULES ARE REACTIVE

They respond to past events.

RULES ARE BOTH OVER- AND UNDERINCLUSIVE

Because they are proxies, they cannot be precise.

PROLIFERATION OF RULES IS A TAX ON THE SYSTEM

Few people can remember them all.

We lose productivity when we stop to look them up.

RULES ARE TYPICALLY PROHIBITIONS

They speak to
can and can’t.

We view them as confining and constricting.

RULES REQUIRE ENFORCEMENT

With laxity,they lose credibility and effectiveness.

They necessitate expensive bureaucracies of compliance.

RULES SPEAK TO BOUNDARIES AND FLOORS

BUT CREATE INADVERTENT CEILINGS

We can’t legislate “The sky’s the limit.”

THE ONLY WAY TO HONOR RULES IS TO OBEY THEM EXACTLY

They speak to coercion and motivation.

The inspiration to excel must come from somewhere else.