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Book Carole "Your presentation was intelligent, interactive and energetic – just what we needed as a closing keynote to this Forum"
Purva Hassomal, Leaders of Abu Dhabi, Family Business Forum Director
World Authority on Executive Stress, Carole Spiers
explains how regulations can increase stress-levels
Regulations are so ever-present in our working lives that we don't usually single them out as stressor-elements. Yet they often add to our daily burden to no beneficial purpose.
For 'just following the regulations' is no longer enough to justify executive action. Today's manager prefers you to question assumptions for the purpose of reading situations correctly and getting things right.
Regulations are often introduced in response to some great disaster, like the Titanic, which brought in the first rules of lifeboat drill. That is the positive side.
The negative side is more complex. Many regulations are clearly obsolete. and in need of either revision or scrapping completely . They often need administering by a whole department, and staff are often motivated to preserve them, or even create more of them, if possible. Furthermore, too many regulations can stifle decision-making initiative.
Compare traffic regulations
It is worth looking at the obvious parallel situation with traffic regulations, which are always promising a bright future of clear, safe roads where vehicles flow smoothly to their destination without delay. Yet congestion just keeps getting worse in one country after another - except one. The findings of a Dutch traffic engineer, Hans Monderman, provide a startling lesson in the creative questioning of regulations.
Monderman was allowed to experiment by dismantling road-signs, uprooting traffic-lights and painting over street-markings, to see what happened. Everyone forecast gridlock. In fact, drivers started treating other road-users with more courtesy and consideration than before.
Interestingly, he calls it Design for Negotiation. We often talk about 'negotiating' a junction or a crossroads, but not usually in terms of ‘negotiating’ with other motorists. Monderman appears to have linked the two meanings of this important word.
This shows that the principle of questioning long-accepted regulations holds good, and should be firmly embedded in today's executive culture.
Regulations - Summary
- Regulations are a less-known 'invisible' stressor-element of working life
- Compare office rules with traffic regulations - often counter-productive
- A creative questioning of regulations should be encouraged in executives
Another key insight from Carole Spiers, World Authority on Executive Stress,
Motivational Speaker and BBC Broadcaster.
