Accountability, not permission.
| Correctness is defined by written policies that change only with knowledge and consent, rather than by the whims of powerful individuals. |
Well-designed, written policies are good for the same reasons that we have laws. They prevent individuals from acting to the detriment of society. They define boundary conditions such that complex issues can be broken down into understandable, manageable problems. By agreeing to abide by certain necessary restrictions, all individuals benefit, the community operates more efficiently, and collective goals are more easily attainable.
Policies must be well-designed because bad policy is worse than none at all. Overly restrictive policies cripple an organization. Complex policies intimidate individuals into acting too conservatively. Unfair policies lead to mutual sabotage. Ambiguous policies provide false justification for powerful individuals to act as they please. Inflexible or immutable policies make it difficult to adapt to new conditions.
Policies must be written because individuals naturally assume that their own policies are widely accepted. In an organization of any appreciable size, this is almost certainly an incorrect assumption. Furthermore, unwritten policies tend to be revised tacitly by powerful individuals, often with the claim that the new policy has always been in place.
Policy is meaningful only if policy changes are implemented deliberately, rather than haphazardly. Such deliberation cannot occur unless all affected parties are aware of changes in advance. Except for cases in which the baseline policy affords certain individuals excessive leverage that has been used to the detriment of the organization, policy changes ought to be negotiated by consent.
Often, one encounters functions or entities that are "owned" by an expert. What the expert does is then correct by definition, because he is the owner. This is problematic, because the expert's customers are relying on his deliverables to satisfy certain properties. If a failure is caused by a violation of those properties, then who is at fault, and (more importantly) what ought to change? Also, if the expert is not available, and how will we know whether his replacement is performing the job correctly? The best solution is to require the expert to define a policy on which his customers can rely.
One cannot eschew ownership completely, because the processes for defining policy must ultimately have ownership, even if it is collective ownership. However, policy ought to be preferred over ownership whenever possible.
| Any individual may do anything that needs to be done, provided that he is accountable for doing it correctly. |
Freedom and responsibility are better than control. If the actions of individuals can be tracked, correctness of actions can be determined, and individuals can be encouraged to act correctly and discouraged from acting incorrectly, then it is counterproductive to prohibit or prevent certain individuals from doing something on the basis that it ought to be done by somebody else instead.
When individuals are empowered to meet their own needs, they can organize themselves around the work to be done, rather than having to communicate their needs to privileged individuals and to wait idly for them to be satisfied. However, individuals must be accountable for correcting their own mistakes in order to prevent chaos from erupting.
When a group is permitted to exclude other capable individuals from performing necessary functions, the typical result is that service is withheld. Often, the excluders will leverage the needs of others to obtain more in exchange for service than is deserved. Ultimately, they cannot even be held accountable for their services. This cannot happen when competitive alternatives are available.
Exclusion is justified by policy vacuum, and leads to further policy vacuum. Once the cycles begins, it is very difficult to stop. Therefore, the need for exclusion ought to be addressed by defining policy instead.
Permissions can be used to prevent individuals from subverting accountability mechanisms or from performing hazardous operations accidentally, but correctness should be enforced through accountability instead of permission.
Anders Johnson, last modified $Date: 2002/02/05 $