It is said that the sport of rugby arose when William Webb Ellis picked up the soccer ball at Rugby school and ran with it. Depending on your perspective this was the birth of a noble game, or a confusing 80-minute melee in which the ball is occasionally kicked, occasionally thrown and often run with.
William was not playing by the same rules.
And often organisational issues are because people aren’t playing by the same rules. The star recruit who doesn’t work out, the great CEO who fails to achieve results, the effective manager who can’t turn things around in a new area. We might talk about organisational fit, or different cultures, but in the end it is often about different rules.
‘Rules’ are the framework within which people operate. Some years ago the ‘Gen Y’ issue was a popular topic — the idea that this generation were in some way different people. As we’ve written before (http://www.novumavi.com.au/Documents/Jan08.htm#_Carl_Linnaeus_and_Gen%20Y) what is more likely is that they are simply the same species interacting with a new environment in ways that younger people do. Their rules are different.
The problems that arise from different rules occur in many ways.
The project team that didn’t deliver may have been because one person’s rules weren’t the same as others. Perhaps their rules were not a model where team is automatically good and produces better results.
People may not get value from a ‘team building’ activity, because their rules don’t include ice breakers, butcher’s paper, and personal disclosure.
The process of acculturation is very much about learning about how ‘we do things around here’ — the rules.
And a long way towards understanding why people don’t fit, or don’t perform, is understanding what their rules are.