Isn’t it better if software service organizations have only a few simple and strong regulations for their people?
Regulations are substitutes for trust…trust in your people’s goodwill, trust in their competence and trust in their commitment. The more the organizations doubt their people, the more rules and regulations they impose.
Some organizations treat their software engineers like illiterate laborers of 1960 and impose regulations which greatly influence them to be unproductive. For example:
- The software engineers must sit on their seat for the whole day and focus on working with their PC/Mac.
- If they go out to for refreshment or a tea break more than once a day, it is not tolerated.
- If they are 30 minutes late from their regular day in-time, their half-day salary would be deducted – it won’t be considered that yesterday night the same engineer had spent 3 additional hours to support an important client.
- Etc.
More often than not, such regulations make employees demotivated and managers annoyed and do not offer any good for the organization’s growth.
Ability to produce great results never comes from imposing a thousand strict regulations on the people. It comes from trimming out the complexities from your systems and replacing it with creative freedom and self-possession in the direction of what’s relevant and right.
Isn’t it an important question for every organization to ask – what is my long term goal and what direction am I taking? And the most important, are such lists of regulations going to help advance the organization’s goal or not?
