Every new rule needs to be associated with one and only one person who is willing to stand up for it and explain it (to your people and to the public).

At one point our service agreement was three pages long…until we extended it to four pages. Why in the world did we do that? I’m sorry but I do not have an answer. A few years ago I feel like we wised up and cut the superfluous junk out and now the entire agreement is a single page. For this I do have an answer: it is easier for everyone. When the agreement was four pages long, I could be assured that 90% of the people it was sent to were not reading it. The folks that were reading it were confused. When we wanted to make a change, it was an ordeal because of all of the references in the document. Perhaps worst of all, I had to re-read the document to make sure I could respond to every item included and if I wasn’t familiar with all of the policies, how could I expect any one to want to even try?

Yesterday, Seth Godin rather succinctly created a rule for making rules: at least one person has to be capable (and willing) to speak up when the rule is challenged. This doesn’t mean you have to go through each and every policy and make one team member responsible for each, but the next time one of your policies is challenged, make sure you (or someone else) can and will defend it.