The Consequences of Following Rules

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the consequences of following rules (and its complement, innovation).

Everywhere you look there are rules and regulations written in BOLD.

NO TRESPASSING

PARKED CARS WILL BE TICKETED

KEEP REFRIGERATED

USE BY 04/28/2022

But what happens when one breaks the rules? Are the penalties severe and immediate, or are they mild and under-enforced? Is there some level of cost/benefit analysis that can be applied to petty shenaniganry?

My partner seems to innately understand that there is more elbow room in the system than advertised. She ignores Use By dates and refrigeration warnings at will. Yesterday’s yogurt! Room-temperature salad dressing! Eggs on the counter!

Eggs on the counter!

I’ve been on a quest the last few years to break more rules. It’s like waking up in the post-simulation goo of the Matrix, messy and enlightening at the same time.

First I started paying for parking selectively. Not because I’m a jerk (at least, I don’t think so) who wants to game the system. Rather, I realized that my anxiety about parking (running out of time! Running back to feed the meter!) was taking up a lot of my energy — without my having any sense of how likely a parking enforcement action actually was.

And now I’ve gathered some data. And I mostly pay for parking. But, when my spot expires and I’ll be back at the car in fifteen minutes, I don’t sweat it. I’ve paid fines a couple of times – and that’s been OK.

In business, I think we’re often bound by our beliefs about our systems rather than the reality of a system itself. These rules are more implicit than a sign demanding (requesting?) that you pay for parking.

For example, many participants in the legal ecosystem use an hourly billing model which creates a lot of perverse side effects (like the incentive to do things inefficiently). They’re operating in a local maximum — while they may be maximizing billings, they are missing the opportunity to climb a bigger mountain and transform the way their firm or practice works.

Mostly, I suspect, this is because it feels quite comfortable to do things in the usual way. Shifting a practice like this is hard because it requires a willingness to take risks and deal with the consequences of being wrong.

If that feels scary to you, I have three suggestions.

1. Start small. Leave some eggs on the counter overnight and see what happens. Stop paying for parking and see what the fines are like. It may sound silly, but I think the “muscle” is the same in both cases.


2. Acknowledge that expanding your boundaries is, in fact, scary. Try to figure out why. What’s the story you’re telling yourself? Does trying something like this feel like it exposes you to catastrophic failure?


3. Work with someone who can support you. This is what I do in my consulting and coaching practice, guide leaders who are transforming the way their teams, companies, and even their whole industries work.

If you’re leading change, you’re doing tough work and you deserve someone in your corner.

What about you? Where might you be stuck inside the Matrix? What rules can you break to test how deep the rabbit hole goes?