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Key Takeaways If no one can name who authorized a rule or why it exists, it’s probably not a real policy — it’s a habit wearing a costume. Kill it.
Each extra approval or check costs a minute. Multiply across every employee, every week, and you’re paying salaries to wait, not produce.
Removing friction is cheaper than buying growth. Cut the red tape you never approved before adding another headcount.
Every successful business relies on policies and procedures. Policies and procedures create consistency, improve quality and allow organizations to move in a unified direction.
For this reason, most successful companies have policies and procedures manuals and other written policies. Without them, companies become chaotic and inconsistent as they grow. But there is an important distinction between systems that are intentionally designed and those that simply evolve over time.
The most damaging policies in a business are often the ones that were never actually created.
These can be called made-up rules — unwritten practices that slowly become accepted as official policy, even when no owner, executive, or person with authority ever approved them. They emerge quietly and gradually. An employee assumes something is required in every circumstance. Another employee observes that behavior and repeats it. Before long, an entire department believes a process is a mandatory policy when, in reality, it is not at all.
As organizations grow, these unofficial rules have a way of growing. Each one may seem insignificant on its own, but together they create a layer of legalism that slows decision-making, frustrates employees, delays customer service and quietly limits growth. It can also upset employees by creating an abundance of rigid rules that make the employees feel restricted. Unlike obvious problems such as declining sales or rising expenses, these self-made policies and procedures are rarely visible on a financial statement. Yet, their impact can be enormous.
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