Bringing Down the Hammer
I see some interesting things from my office window on 10th Street here in Columbia, Missouri. So it went the other day when I looked out to see two parking enforcement officers, one on each side of the road, decked out in neon yellow thermal wear (I probably don’t need to tell you it was freezing) doling out tickets one after another to pretty much every car parked along the way.
See, it’s common knowledge that parking enforcement here is usually pretty lax. In fact, Ryan’s strategy is to never feed the meter when he parks downtown because he’s confident that all of the quarters he saves not doing so will more than cover the cost of any ticket he might eventually get. But apparently there is a new sheriff in town because those two parking enforcement officers have been back nearly every day (even when it continued to be freezing) doling out the same volume of tickets to all of the folks who thought they could get away with not paying for parking.
“That’s quite an enforcement strategy,” I said to Taylor as we watched with some schadenfreude (one of the rogue parkers had also blocked the entrance to our lot), “lulling everyone into a sense of complacency and then absolutely bringing down the hammer.”
I bring this up because there is an interesting conversation to be had about how vigorously we all make and enforce rules, regulations, policies, and procedures. On one extreme, there’s a defensible case to be made for making and enforcing nothing and instead surrounding yourself with good people and trusting their judgment. On the other, there’s something to be said for consistently enforcing clear expectations.
For example, what if a star salesperson submits an expense report with meals well in excess of the per diem? Do you approve it? What if it happens again? What if other salespeople start doing that?
Or what would you do if your best equipment operator, who you know suffers from severe chronic pain, tested positive on a random drug test for marijuana? Would you terminate her in accordance with policy?
These seem like things one might reasonably overlook, but it’s also true, as Brent observed in his annual letter, that “Our biggest problems always start small.” And as much as I try to traffic in no-brainers, it’s also the case that sometimes even opposite choices can both seem like the right thing to do.
In the end, constraints reduce variance. So the questions to ask if you decide not to have or enforce one are (1) Can I tolerate the downside?; and (2) Is the upside worth it? And if the answer to either one of those is “no,” then maybe just feed the meter.
– Tim
