Rules Vs Policies

The main purpose we work everyday is to get salary to support our live as well as our family live. But, sometimes because of the situation, we often lost our grip and put too much attention to a condition involving human relationship as well the money involved in the process of finishing our work. To that, in order to avoid putting too much attention to people relationship or the money involved, a number of rules are setup.

Based on that, rules are meant to be used for avoiding conflict between people in a workplace. Rules are also meant to be used to make us understand what we have to do for our work. Furthermore, rules are meant to be used to say what is right and what is wrong during the process of finishing our work.

However, is a workplace working based only on rules?

If so, working place will be a heaven place to be. A couple of things can be working against rules. The number one thing that can work against rule is the policy (leader’s policy). Policy made often overrules the existing rules. For some, even the number of policies made amount to a number which can create confusion among workers, including confusion about the work to be finished, confusion which to be done and which to be left for others to do. With a policy, we also sometimes have to knowingly leave people to finish their work with incorrect procedures.

We knew that the one task of a leader is to make policies. But, how far a leader has to deliver this responsibility. One thing for sure, we want to keep the working balance in our workplace. From what I understand, if there are rules, then we have to follow. If there is no rule and a decision has to be made, then there is a responsibility for a leader to produce a policy. I can also say here that, if a leader produces too many policies even for the simplest matters, then he/she, can be said, is not anymore a LEADER or failed to be a LEADER, and he/she at the end only performs as a very common BOSS. A BOSS (red: a bad leader), even, sometimes, cannot recognize whether he/she is about to setup a policy or a general rule. At least, that is my current point of view for this matter.

So, are you a good LEADER or a good BOSS?