Working Up

by Dwayne Phillips

Senior managers issue policy. That is one of the more important tasks they do. A misunderstanding of policy statements and their purpose has given them a bad name. A better understanding of policy statements aids everyone in an organization.

Issuing policy is one of the more important tasks that managers can do. Please keep reading. I promise this may make sense in a few sentences.

“Policy” is one of the more hated items in the workplace. That is because people don’t understand what policy should be and how policy should be used.
In essence:

Policies are broad statements that help everyone working with the policy issuer decide.

Note the word in the middle of that statement: help. A policy helps people accomplish their daily work—notably a policy helps people with the many choices they face everyday.

For example,

All software written should be easier to port to a mobile application.

(This may seem to be obvious, but nothing is obvious.)

This policy helps everyone, especially the programmers, in the development of software. Any time a team leader or programmer must choose between this detail and that detail, they look to the policy, they literally look to the policy as it is posted on the wall or as a line at the top of their monitor display, to help them choose. They choose to do whatever will make it easier to port the software to a mobile application.

Senior managers should have the magic number of policies in affect at any one time (seven, plus or minus two). If a senior manager wants to issue a new policy, they will probably have to remove an existing one.

Keep policies simple and direct. Always remember that the policy is supposed to help people decide what to do in their daily job.