I’m sitting in a meeting listening to a group of expensive, busy managers discuss whether they should approve one employee’s vacation request because it comes at an awkward time. One person notes that the last time they discussed vacation requests, it was in regard to the same employee.

When you find yourself talking about something you’ve discussed before, you’re re-litigating a problem. In this case, it was a vacation problem.

I stopped the meeting and asked, “What’s your vacation policy?”

One of the managers responded, “In the handbook, we have a rule that says you have to ask for a vacation.”

I said, “But what’s the policy?”

“Well, we don’t have a rule that says you can’t ask for vacation during the busy season.”

“But what’s the policy?” I asked again.

“We don’t have one.”

I said, “If you had a policy, what would it be?”

“We don’t want people to take vacations while we’re busy.”

“That’s a great policy,” I said. “Set it.”

Questioning previous decisions impedes progress and tells people not to innovate. You make compliance difficult because the rules don’t matter — because you’re willing to debate them over and over again.

Here’s another example: An owner calls me and says, “We need to hire a salesperson.”

“Why don’t you advertise for one?” I ask.

“The last person we got that way didn’t work out.”

“So, do you need a salesperson, or don’t you?”

“Yes, but we don’t want to advertise.”

You get the picture. The owner is using an old story to convince himself that what he did before didn’t work. Actually, he didn’t do it well enough for it to work.

Managers and owners often try to change an old decision or avoid making a new one. If you’re re-litigating, you’re in analysis paralysis. Either way, you’re suffering from chronic indecision and wasting time.

Ask the Right Question

Asking the right question saves time and money.

My favorite question is, “What’s the problem you’re trying to solve?” I ask it all the time because it applies often.

Applied to the vacation problem, it might start with, “Are we trying to solve whether to approve this person’s vacation, or are we trying to solve how to reject a vacation request?”

If you make a rule, it can’t be broken, so be careful about making a rule when what you need is a policy. Policies include allowances for exceptions because sometimes exceptions are necessary.

A valuable technician of mine once asked to attend a family reunion in the middle of our busiest time of year. Our policy was that employees did not schedule vacations during our six-month busy season, which the policy defined.

The technician politely and earnestly requested an exception. Since it was a policy and not a rule, we could discuss whether to make an exception, which helped us clarify the policy.

Once you have a policy, whoever owns it must achieve compliance before making exceptions.

Say you have a policy that all salespeople have to use a certain customer relationship management software system for all sales leads. Will you make many exceptions to that? Probably not. But until you achieve compliance, you don’t know what the exceptions might be.

First, achieve compliance; then, if you face an exception, modify the policy to reduce the number of exceptions.

Now, when a vacation request comes up in the management meeting, someone will say, “We have a policy about this. Why are we re-litigating? Do we need to fix the policy, or do we need to make an exception?”

That’s time well spent.

Scalability and Policy

Scalability reduces redundancies in processes and roles. If, for instance, I don’t need five project managers who all do the same tasks, I need to find the tasks common to all of them and centralize that service.

Reducing redundancy frees up managers for best-use policies. If management is in the weeds trying to micromanage a rule, they’re not doing what they should, which is selling, planning, and administrating the business. Policies make it easier for them to do this and are an integral part of your ability to be scalable. That way, you have less overhead and fewer managers.

The managers can now focus on more important things than rehashing one person’s vacation request.

Sound policy makes for sound business.