Policy

The Jolly Contrarian’s Glossary The snippy guide to financial services lingo.™ Go Premium Index — Click the ᐅ to expand: Glossary Comments? Questions? Suggestions? Requests? Insults? We’d love to 📧 hear from you. Sign up for our newsletter.

“Many policies are organizational scar tissue — codified overreactions to situations that are unlikely to happen again”.

- Jason Fried

Policy is organizational scar tissue. It's the sheep they’ll hang you for. It is the dominant ideology of modern management theory. Policy, and process, is seen as practically inviolate, or immovable. It is the mountain; the workers are Mohammed. So calling out substandard performance in the workforce is orthodox business management practice. But calling out substandard process or, heaven forfend, policy, is a kind of sedition.

Yet

See also

• doctrine of precedent
• elephants and turtles
• The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable
• Rework - Jason Fried