Everyone waits for green. On rules and principles.

It is six in the morning. The junction is empty as far as you can see. The light is red, and you wait.

Not because it is necessary. Because the rule says so, and the rule does not know that nobody is coming.

A traffic light is a well-designed rule. It is clear, it is fair, and you do not have to think about it. That is its strength. It is also the reason the traffic stands still while nothing is happening.

The same traffic, three ways of steering

Roughly the same amount of traffic moves through the three junctions above. What differs is how it is steered.

At the traffic light, the rule decides. Everyone does what is asked: stop at red, go at green. You carry it out, and there is no need to think. Everyone follows the same schedule, whether it is busy or quiet, and the queue comes from the regulation, not from the volume.

At the roundabout, a principle decides: whoever is on the roundabout goes first. The principle is fixed; applying it is up to the driver. They look, take account of who has right of way, merge and drive on. Nobody stands still.

At the third junction there is no light and no roundabout. There is an agreement everyone knows, and everyone reads the situation. It works because people see each other and take responsibility.

An organisation steers the same way

With rules, the organisation’s traffic light: procedures, approval rounds, signatures. Clear and fair, and they ask nothing of the judgement of whoever follows them. Everyone sticks to the objectives of their own team or department, and that is how silos form. A purchase of fifty euros passes the same three signatures as a purchase of fifty thousand.

With principles, the roundabout: one shared starting point that everyone applies themselves. “Whatever helps the customer goes first.” The principle is fixed. What it means in a specific situation is decided by whoever is closest to it.

With guidelines, the third junction: a framework within which teams make their own choices. The framework says where the boundaries lie, not what has to happen within them.

Each of the three has its place. A traffic light belongs where trams, cyclists and lorries cross. A procedure belongs with whatever touches safety or legislation, and with approvals where a second pair of eyes genuinely adds something. What matters is that the choice is made deliberately. In many organisations it happens unnoticed: every incident adds a rule, and so they pile up. Who ever removes them again is written down nowhere.

Principles work where three things are in place

Clarity and overview. Whoever merges knows the agreement and sees what is coming. In an organisation, that means clarity about who does what, and information about what others are doing at the moment you need it.

Time and knowledge to judge. You do not build a roundabout on a motorway: at that speed there is nothing to judge. Whoever takes a decision needs the time and the knowledge to take it well.

A shared goal. Everyone on the roundabout wants the same thing: to get off safely. In an organisation, that is the answer to the question of what you are there for, and whether everyone knows that answer.

These are not personality traits. They are design choices. How much job control someone has, and whether that control can actually be used, follows from how the work is divided. In the late 1970s Robert Karasek showed that job control, together with job demands, determines whether work challenges people or wears them out. More on this under organisational design.

From rule to principle

Replacing rules with principles does not mean giving up control. It puts control in a different place: with whoever does the work, within a framework everyone knows.

That is also where it connects with change load: how much change has to pass through an organisation at the same time. This essay is about how much room people get to absorb that change. An organisation that steers with rules feels every change everywhere. An organisation that steers with principles absorbs it where it lands.

The question to start with: which rule in your organisation could become a principle? Look at the rule that is worked around most often. It tells you where people have long been working with a principle.

Recognise a rule like that in your own organisation? Do get in touch. A conversation about it is always welcome.