Tuesday, September 2, 2008

thinking about procedures

So, you want to make a set of rules in your classroom, but, to make them more palatable, you call them procedures. This puts you in the arena of Harry Wong, or the Iowa PBS model. Will they work?

Maybe.

I have been thinking about this a lot lately. It is important to have procedures that benefit your top people. For example, in a school, there is a value to having a lunch room procedure. The best behaving kids in your school want to be able to eat in a timely manner. Cool. By that fact, you have established procedures for the right reason.

But let's think about the procedure for dealing with, say, parking your car. The best kids in terms of behavior generally don't park in reserved or handicapped spots. They are rule followers. But publishing a procedure that says we will tow your car is not a procedure at all. It is a consequence. And by shifting that procedure over to being a consequence, it does not necessarily bring out the best in people.

The workplace is another one of those things. Assume that you have a rule that all employees will not use their cell phones, and those using their cell phones will be disciplined. The best employees will not use their cell phones if they feel it is a problem to their job; yet, by employing a "procedure", really, morale has been damaged.

What things should we do to put the genii of procedure back into the bottle? Here's a thought: BUILD RELATIONSHIPS. Ask people WHY they do the things they do, and if they are giving you a valid rationale, and are in the top of the game at some point in their employment, perhaps a compromise is in order. The alternative, consequences, simply guarantees that over time, your organization will sink to its lowest common denominator.