F*** the rules!

How often do you question The Implicit Rules? How often do you challenge The Assumptions? How often do you make sure that you're not doing something a certain way simply because that's the way it's done?

How often do you recognize when others are judging, criticizing, or trying to guilt-trip you based on some unstated rule about How People Are Supposed To Be? How often do you call someone on it? When I hear someone say, "Everybody does it this way", or ""Everybody knows this is appropriate behavior under these circumstances...", I try to ask, "Who wrote that rule?"

I believe that The Rules are the leading cause of crap products, frustrated users, and unhappy relationships. I'm not talking about all rules and standards of course, just the largely-unstated-but-blindly-accepted ones that:

Never made sense.

No longer make sense.

Make sense, but only in a different context.

One of the things that makes challenging the rules so damn hard is that other people have so much invested in... keeping the status quo. And of course the minute you question a rule, you're potentially threatening the people who've been following that rule... even if those people don't understand the rule either! Simply hinting that there could be a better way is enough to trigger someone's defenses.

Another problem with questioning the rules is that they're so pervasive, and we just come to accept them. Just as memes and urban legends and "talking points" become real simply because they're repeated, rules take on a life of their own even when nobody can remember why they exist in the first place!

And the rules exist in every last part of our life both personal and professional. (Did you wait too long to make that phone call? Did you dress appropriately? Are you using language appropriately? Did you file the necessary papers? Did you use your advertising budget for advertising? Did you charge your user for the tech support call? Are you being "a team player"? Did you cover all of the topics in the book?)

A huge chunk of the implicit professional rules today are damaging because they inhibit innovation. They stop the one thing businesses need the most--breakthough ideas.

Yes, one could get into trouble at work for asking too many questions about The Rules, but what have you got to lose? Your job? That might have been relevant a few years back, but it's becoming less a factor today. Sure, you definitely could lose your job (like, um, me) for asking too many "but, WHY?" questions, but if you don't, your entire company, or perhaps an entire industry could start slipping under the waves, anchored by inhibiting, outdated, or just plain stupid rules.

At Sun, I used to hear "Customers don't want that." Or "Customers need you to do it this way." And I'd always ask (nicely at first), for the evidence. "How exactly do we KNOW this?" Who decided that? If we ever did know that was true, is it STILL true? And on I went... you can see how annoying I was.

I told the rest of the team that we should put each rule on trial for its life. Make it sit in the middle of the room and defend itself. And if it couldn't come up with a good enough reason to live... out it went. At first, of course, it was a "cute" idea that everyone had fun with, but eventually I was shut down when one manager's response to one of my "But why are we doing it this way?" questions was, "Because that's what upper management said, and so that's what we're going to do! End of discussion!" Based on my response to that statement, I became known as "short-timer Kathy" from that day on...

If we'd followed The Rules when designing the original Head First book (Head First Java), we would have been simply one more of the 2,000 other currently-selling Java books, with virtually no way to break past the established, well-loved existing books. Even a spectacular marketing campaign would not have been enough to even earn back our advance. We simply looked at every rule and constraint and said, "let's pretend these don't exist... what can we do to implement the metacognitive learning principles so that people can learn more quickly, with better retention, than with most traditional approaches?" Because of their willingness to challenge the rules, it's O'Reilly (and not Sun Press) that has the top four selling Java books right now. : ) The amazing part to me is that O'Reilly, having invented and established many of those rules, had a lot more at stake in breaking them, but that's Tim for you.

So... what implicit the-way-things-are rules are you accepting without question? What are you taking for granted and assuming? What rules can you put to the test? My favorite words for this:

"Why?"

"What happens if we don't?"

"When was the last time anyone verified that?"

"Is that still true?"

and the best one...

"Who wrote that rule?"