We Have a Policy Against That

Policies.  Rules meant to spell out what things are ok to do, and more often, what things are not ok to do.

Whenever I hear the words "we have a policy . . .", I filter it through three lenses:

1. The practicality lens- for instance, "no diving" is a good policy in a 3 feet deep pool, but a terrible policy in a 12 foot deep pool.  If the policy isn't practical, or doesn't make sense, I quickly move onto the other two lenses.
2. The reactionary lens- if the policy doesn't appear to be practical at first glance, then I suspect it was put in place as a reaction to something.  I've blogged earlier about dumb rules and think these rules- or policies- are reactions to isolated situations.  If the pool had an accident with a diver in a 12 foot pool, that is horrible, but it isn't sufficient enough to make a policy against it.  If that sounds harsh, think of how many times you hear a tragedy happen (on the news or one of those 'news magazine' shows like 20/20), think to yourself 'that's horrible', and then do the same thing (i.e. leaving child in car while running into your house quick, running with a stick, etc).
3. The 'excuse' lens- the final lens for policies is the excuse lens, meaning, we actually don't have a policy against a certain behavior, but we're not comfortable with the behavior, so we'll use the word 'policy'.  You see, using the word 'policy' scares off most of us- we hear it and we stop our inquiry.  Back to the pool analogy- you start diving in the deep end and soon the lifeguard whistles you.  She says "no diving" and you're respond with "why?".  She says, "it's our pool's policy".  Most of us stop there, but if you were to keep going and asked to see the policy, you may very well in fact find no such policy.  It's simply a matter of preference the pool has adopted as policy.  Also, if you were to ask five lifeguards as to why there is a policy against diving, you might get five different answers.  In this event, you know the policy fits this lens.