The “Bizmanualz On-Line” Policies and Procedures management software system is now undergoing testing. When you try it, you’ll see it’s primarily an Internet-based application. Very little runs on your local PC or network.

A few people have wondered about working online, asking, “Why would I want an online policy application that Bizmanualz hosts and maintains, rather than a policy application installed locally?”

#1 - It Costs Less

The Bizmanualz online solution spreads the cost of hardware and software across many customers, so you receive one low monthly fee for editors/authors and nothing for read-only access. If your company wants its own policy server, it wouldn’t enjoy the cost-sharing advantages and it would incur the entire cost of purchasing and maintaining the needed infrastructure.

Some still insist on an in-house installation because it gives them greater control. However, the business world, in general, is moving away from local software and toward hosted software services, software-as-a-service (SaaS), and cloud solutions.  Companies don’t want to pay for software and hardware, especially when it sits idle much of the time. The great thing about software-as-a-service is that pricing reflects what you actually use.

#2 - You Get a Policy Management Solution Now

In large organizations, defining policty management application requirements and allocating resources to buy or build are fraught with political obstacles. Gaining buy-in from all stakeholders takes time. It’s easier for stakeholders to agree on what they need from a policy management software application when they can try it out first.

Because SaaS policy management solutions can be turned on instantly and require no installation, they offer an immediate solution. Users can then define their needs in terms of what the SaaS policy management solutions solutions does or does not do.  You can then offer cost-benefit trade-offs in response to specific user needs.

Meeting user needs is not always possible at an acceptable level of investment. But by establishing good communications with your SaaS policy management solutions vendor, you may better understand the trade-offs and even influence the vendor’s development plans. As the polciy manager who uses the system, it’s easier for you to get a vendor to add the exact policy management features you need than for your company to allocate scarce resources. Under a SaaS model, new policy software features and upgrades are part of the value delivered for your subscription fee.

#3 - Continual SaaS Upgrades and Improvements

While large organizations have business analysts collecting user needs and defining what a policy management software application should do for them, smaller companies often do not. Often that role in an SMB is filled on an as-needed basis by an IT manager, and conflicting priorities may require redeployment of resources right after the software launches.

Software-as-a-service vendors on the other hand live or die by how well they support and improve their product. They must deliver value and ever-improved features and performance in exchange so that customers feel good about their monthly subscription fees.

Under the licensed server approach, improvements often come in annual or longer installation cycles with renewal fees attached. It could be a year or longer before you get upgrades. Furthermore, the cost of upgrading often means putting it off, which means you could fall behind companies that can afford to upgrade. Under the SaaS model, you get upgrades continually and you don’t pay any more for them.

#4 - No Unnecessary Technology Investment

For many companies, installed policy servers just don’t make sense anymore. Big, expensive server hardware and software has to be in place to run your policy procedure management software, but the necessary platform is underused. That is, policy management as a category of software demands little in the way of computing power. Unless yours is a vast organization with intensive policy compliance needs, your investment would sit idle most of the time and you’d end up paying for power you didn’t need.

It makes sense to spread the fixed costs across many companies, and get someone else (Bizmanualz) to take care of all that computing power for you, and that is the advantage of SaaS policy management.

#5 - SaaS Monthly Fees are Cheaper and Easier to Budget

Under a dedicated-server approach, IT departments typically pay annual license and maintenance fees of about 20% to 40% of the up-front software license fees. So our SaaS (on-line) policy solution is actually much cheaper to maintain from IT’s perspective. And because Bizmanualz online fully supports the SaaS solution, your IT department doesn’t have to allocate technical time and talent to maintain a dedicated solution.

SaaS enables you to share most of the costs of the hardware and software across all the provider’s (Bizmanualz’s) customers, while protecting your data. As a matter of fact, policy managers and finance professionals (to name two) who use our policy software are commonly surprised when they approach their IT department heads and find that initiatives are underway to identify SaaS or cloud applications like the Bizmanualz policy management system.

Remote hosting is becoming more common. If you approach IT management with a SaaS option, they may consider you to be a real forward-thinking user!

#6 - Compliance with SAS 70 Type II

Some companies like SaaS as a concept but they don’t want their data to reside outside their firewall. Our hosting is fully compliant and audited to SAS 70 Type II standards. Conforming to Type II standards means your data are fully protected. Has your in-house IT department met the SAS 70 standard?

#7 - Polciy workflow Compliance for editors but users don’t have to do anything differently.

While it is true that draft policy and procedure files are stored on our secure server outside your firewall, your company can store “released” documents on your in-house server. In that way, you could use our workflow management tools and still publish the released files to a location behind your firewall. Authors and editors gain policy workflow and compliance tools, and the majority of employees don’t have to change the way they access released documents. They would simply read the released policy documents as they have been doing in your Intranet or SharePoint, and released documents would reside within your firewall.

Our editing module stores Bizmanualz policies and procedures templates, as well as any changes you make or any other documents that you upload. Most customers tell us that their compliance policies and procedures are not considered sensitive documents. There should be no reason to upload sensitive documents. For most customers, released files are published to a secure web site that your employees - or anyone you want - can access them.

With the trade-offs in mind, the online SaaS policy management approach works for most customers. Furthermore, we can customize a solution for you. Just email sales@bizmanualz.com. Sign up for a free trial and see for yourself.

The “Deepwater Horizon” disaster, unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico over the last three weeks, should serve as an object lesson in how NOT to manage a crisis. Here are just a few of the ways in which British Petroleum (BP) and its contractors made a bad situation infinitely worse:

1. You have to have a contingency plan. Whether through willful disregard or naked ignorance, it’s apparent that BP and its subcontractors, as well as the federal government, weren’t ready from the outset to handle the oil rig disaster. Compared with the final tally, which we won’t know until decades from now, the cost to prepare for a worst-case scenario would’ve been microscopic.  Good risk management would’ve helped, too.

2. Someone has to take responsibility. It’s one thing to say something went wrong but you won’t know what for sure until all the results are in. It’s another thing altogether to immediately start pointing the finger of blame at everyone else, as oil executives did before the US Senate in recent weeks. Who made the final decision to undertake the project? Who made the decisions to “do this” and “don’t do that”?  ISO 9001, as well as sound ethics and common sense, dictates that someone at the top must be responsible.

3. Quality is not an inconvenience. The Minerals Management Service (MMS) was not conducting monthly safety testing on the Deepwater Horizon in accordance with federal law. Furthermore, the MMS has reportedly granted drilling permits there and elsewhere without adequate environmental safety reviews.

The most important piece of safety equipment, the blowout preventer, was said to have been damaged weeks before the fateful explosion but not repaired or replaced. Countless other shortcuts were allegedly taken for the sake of time and money.

The sad part is that the parties involved - especially BP - could have easily afforded to take their time and do things right. (The oil business has been hugely profitable over the last five years, right? Well, what have they done with the record profits they earned?)

We all see the price to be paid for haste and carelessness. We can’t afford it.

* * * * * * *

Further Reading:

• Blowout: the Deepwater Horizon Disaster, CBS News, May 16, 2010 – http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/05/16/60minutes/main6490197.shtml
• Rig Explosion: the Blame Game Begins at Senate Hearing, Associated Press, May 11, 2010 – http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/deepwaterhorizon/6999804.html

What is it about us that makes change so hard to accept and even harder to manage? Where does resistance to change come from and what can we do about it?

“There is nothing wrong with change, if it is in the right direction.”
Winston Churchill, 1874-1965

Well, there is no ready solution (especially not in the space of this blog post). The word “change”, in whatever context, has always made people react with varying degrees of fear, frustration, and/or anger (or “FUD”). Yet, change goes on all around us, all the time. Much of change (the expanding waistline,  for instance) happens so slowly and subtly that we don’t notice it until well after it’s taken place.

Some change is thrust upon us. We hear around the office that “change is in the wind” and we feel threatened and anxious.  Let’s say your company has elected to implement a quality management system. Even if the current situation is not good — your customers are letting you know your product quality has slipped by walking away — many of us would still rather have the status quo.  Better the devil we know than the one we don’t…right? (”We just have to make our stuff better…that’s all.”)

The organization has to deal with resistance on a personal and an institutional level. Each is difficult to overcome and, like it or not, both must be dealt with.

Personal Resistance

If I say to you, “We’re going to change the way we do things around here”, what’s your reaction?  You have an emotional reaction, don’t you?  Probably a mixture of shock, anxiety, apprehension, and a few other gut feelings.

“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again
and expecting different results.”
Albert Einstein, 1879-1955

You may feel unprepared. You may fear being left behind. Certainly, if you’re like most you don’t like the idea of leaving safe, familiar territory. (Besides, you haven’t done anything wrong.)

Experience may tell you to anticipate interpersonal conflicts in the course of change. It might also tell you to watch out for interoffice conflicts (power grabs, backstabbing…that kind of thing).

Institutional Resistance

Larger companies have a harder time with change, due to inertia (i.e., “It’s the way things have always been done around here”). With the current state of the world economy, there’s the question of where and how to expend your limited time and other resources, not to mention that as resources are harder to come by, the company’s focus narrows considerably. (”We need to increase sales now!“)

Then there’s that 800-pound gorilla in the room — office politics. Whenever — wherever — there is change, some stand to lose power and others, to gain and consolidate. People forget about what’s best for everyone and concentrate on self. “Office politics” is probably the single biggest obstacle to change. Let me amend that — office politics has a hand in change, but not the change we really need.

“Change is the only constant.“
Heraclitus, 535-475 BCE

Understand that resistance to change exists.  It may take unusually strong leadership — someone with uncommon vision and fortitude — to overcome individual and organizational resistance to change.

Make no mistake, though — change is a part of us. Are you taking an active role in change, or do you passively submit to it? Which of those will bring the kind of change you want and need?

Is change — or change management — a problem for your organization? If you were in charge, what would you do differently about the problem?

Here we go again. Just as it did a decade ago, questionable or downright unethical behavior has led to the enrichment of a few and the financial ruin of many. And after the damage has been done, the legislature has vowed to make sure “it will never happen again”.

Here’s the story in 2010: Citigroup allegedly did not see the mortgage crisis coming, or it failed to properly manage risk. Either way, a lot of mortgage holders are in extreme financial difficulty. Goldman Sachs is reported to have made an enormous profit a couple of years ago by betting against the mortgage market, supposedly with help from Paulson & Company.

And before that, there was Madoff Securities. Bernie Madoff was put in jail for running a “Ponzi scheme” for a number of years, but not before investors in his scheme lost everything.

The situation is strikingly similar to that of about a decade ago, when executives at Enron, Tyco, and other companies enriched themselves at the expense of shareholders.  Then, the U.S. Congress developed the regulation known as Sarbanes-Oxley as a result of the financial misdeeds.

Now, Congress is again debating the need for legislation to combat ethical “lapses”. Why legislation should even be considered is a mystery — we know from history (e.g., Prohibition, the War on Drugs) that moral behavior cannot be legislated. When people want badly enough to make a profit, gain power, improve their competitive position, or do whatever it is they want to do, they will:

• Prevent the undesirable (e.g., ethics legislation) from happening;
• Water down the legislation so as to make it virtually worthless; and
• Find ways to circumvent the law, even as it’s being enacted.

So, how do you make people behave in an ethical manner, especially in settings where temptation is hard to avoid? Well, you can’t ensure everyone will behave ethically in all circumstances. If Mom and Dad and all the other influential people in their lives couldn’t plant a fully functioning moral compass in them, you’re not going to have much luck.

It’s an almost certain bet that the companies in question have an ethics policy in place. Merely having an ethics policy isn’t enough, though, any more than having legislation in place is a cure for society’s ills.  However, there are ways you might be able to lessen the risk of unethical behavior. To make your ethics policy work, you can:

• Develop a clear, concise ethics policy (a “code of ethics”);
• Communicate your ethics policy to employees, management, suppliers, customers - in other words, let all stakeholders know where you stand;
• Enforce the policy - punish unethical conduct and positively reinforce ethical behavior;
• Establish a framework (hierarchy) of ethical responsibility;
• Develop and implement a system of checks and balances within the framework of your policy;
• Make all stakeholders part of your ethical framework - everyone is responsible; and
• Regardless of where you are in the hierarchy, set an example for others.

And no, I don’t expect that “it’s just that simple”. No matter what you do, you will not eliminate unethical behavior entirely. People succumb to temptation when it becomes too great, and this is probably the most important point. Understand what tempts people to act unethically and do what you can to prevent or lessen the temptation.

Good luck, and let me know if you have any answers.

* * * * * * *

Recommended Reading

1. Grace, H.S., Jr., and Haupert, J. E., “How to Make an Ethics Program Work”, The CPA Journal, April, 2006 - http://www.nysscpa.org/cpajournal/2006/406/essentials/p66.htm
2. Crosby, David C., “Who Is Responsible for Quality?”, Quality Digest, April 20, 2010 - http://www.qualitydigest.com/inside/quality-insider-column/who-responsible-quality.html#

In a blog post I recently read, the writer said that in America, when someone says “our policy is…”, the policy is stated and adhered to but in his country, “not so much”. He went on to say that the cultural signals are different between the two countries.

The writer goes on to suggest that in his homeland, they seem to operate on the premise that if most people are told, “We can’t do that…it’s against our policy”, they will not question the assertion and will just walk away. But, if you argue forcefully and with conviction, they will comply. In America, you don’t have to argue - they do what they say.

I’m happy he’s satisfied with the way things are here. I would argue, though, based on my many and varied experiences, that policy as written and policy as executed are two distinct branches on the same tree here, there, and everywhere else. And the wrong branch is dying.

I’ll give you an example: I once did business with a certain purveyor of wireless products and services before I became an employee. Once I became an employee, I naturally enjoyed a sizeable discount on everything wireless.  The service wasn’t that great but for the price, I felt I could bear some pain. A few years down the road, the company ”rightsized” and I became an ex-employee.

The way to gain a good reputation is to endeavor to be what you desire to appear.
Socrates

At the end of my wireless contract, I looked at what the now ex-employer wanted to charge me for its goods and services (retail prices had gone up quite a bit).  I asked at a local office if my being a steady-paying customer for over eight years counted for something. What would they do to keep a good customer?

They said they were powerless to do anything - it was driven “by corporate”. I asked them to check with A/R and even offered to get my credit report to show I was a customer worth hanging onto. They wouldn’t deal, though.

I decided to take it to the corporate office. Sure enough, they were as indifferent to my “plight” as the local office. They said, ”If we do it for you, we have to do it for everybody.”

Their stated policy is to “give customers exceptional service” but what their actions say is “…as long as it doesn’t cost us up front.”  Their implicit policy is to treat customer service (or customer satisfaction) as a necessary evil.

The time-honored maxim — that it’s cheaper to keep customers than it is to replace them — seems to have lost its meaning. Perhaps, too, the concept of “cost control” has become the top priority…to the exclusion of everything else.

What do you think? More importantly, what do you tell your customers, and what do you do?

We’re conducting a poll on LinkedIn, asking users what their company’s acceptable use policy is with respect to “Twitter”. Does your company:

• Encourage you to use Twitter?
• Tolerate it?
• Discourage its use?
• Forbid you to use it?

If respondents aren’t familiar with the phenomenon and/or they don’t care, they can click on “What’s ’Twitter’?” The results in this highly unscientific poll, to date, are:

• 50% - Encourage its use
• 19% - Tolerate it
• 26% - Forbid it

Three percent responded “What’s Twitter?”  Looks like two-thirds of this sample is already there or is close to getting there.   On the other hand, if we assign a value to each response, like so:

• Encourage = +2
• Tolerate = +1
• Twitter? = 0
• Discourage = -1
• Forbid = -2

The result is between zero and one, which gives us the impression that while this group of companies is aware of Twitter, they’re not ready to make a commitment, either.  They’re a little “lukewarm”.

As I said, this isn’t a scientific poll. LinkedIn doesn’t allow us to gather demographics, so we don’t know if the sample is all B2B, if the respondents are top management or rank-and-file, etc. Still, a dirty window is better than no window at all, isn’t it?

So, what about your company? Are you using Twitter? Do you have a company policy on the use of Twitter? Is Twitter better suited to B2C than B2B?  Take our poll and let us know where you stand.

Thank you.

As I mentioned in another recent post, I’ve begun using the “Polls” feature of LinkedIn to gather data, however unscientifically done, that might tell me what’s going on in the minds of the Websphere’s inhabitants. It seems people love to take polls, especially when their commitment is minimal. They not only get to express an opinion (sort of), but they also get to compare themselves with other “pollees” (looked up that last word — Merriam-Webster’s OK with it).

Many of us participate in opinion polls routinely. Polls give us validation, as well as a sense of belonging. We vote online for everything from “Who’s the most popular talk-show host?” to “What was the worst outfit at the Golden Globes?” to whether news sites should charge for their online content.

Companies shape their actions and their policies, in part, on what people say. If we’re good, we understand what our customers are saying and act accordingly; if we’re not, we come up with “new Coke”.

At Bizmanualz, we want to know your opinions. We want to know how you feel about certain issues such as policies and procedures, process improvement, lean thinking, quality, and tools and techniques associated with those concepts. My first LinkedIn question is “What’s Your Company’s ‘Acceptable Use Policy’ with respect to Twitter?

Another question I just posted is “What’s the PRIMARY Goal of Your Social Media Program?” Even if you don’t have a social media program, take the poll (we have a “don’t have one” response). Then, please come back to Bizmanualz and comment further on the question, the poll results, or about something in the realm of policies and procedures, quality, etc., that concerns you. Create your own poll on LinkedIn and share the link with us, or ask us a question and we’ll see about creating a poll for the community.

Thank you so much for your participation.  As always, best of luck.

Last November, Lifehacker released results of a poll it conducted. They simply asked visitors, “Do you use Twitter?” The results were:

• Yes, regularly - am a big fan (26%)
• Occasionally (20%)
• Yes, but only for search (5%)
• Never - don’t care for (47%)

Another 3% said “other”.  Lifehacker didn’t ask about Twitter policies, though. Seeing (anecdotally) that social media policies appear to be on the increase,* I constructed my own unscientific poll on LinkedIn. I asked my “connections” (a small sample) if their companies’ policy is to:

• Encourage its use? (50%)
• Tolerate it? (18%)
• Discourage it? (0%)
• Forbid it? (27%), or
• What’s Twitter? (4%)

What’s missing, obviously, are demographics — age, gender, respondent’s job, size of the company, whether they’re B2B or B2C, etc. — and methodology. In other words, the poll would never stand up to scrutiny. Nevertheless, there’s some value there. I know what my next step is — that’s asking you, the reader, if you think an acceptable use policy for Twitter — and other social media — is needed at your workplace.

A lot of companies jumped all at once on the “Twitter train” without stopping to consider, “Is there a point to all this? Or are we just reacting?” They jumped in without putting together a plan. They were thinking (I’m guessing) that they had to get “out there” and build Twitter following because their competitors surely were, or they must be very, very close. They didn’t want to be thought of as followers, or technological laggards.

They didn’t know what results to expect, yet they were quickly disenchanted when they didn’t achieve these unspecified results. (It’s all over the Internet what they wanted — a business model, aka, money, cash flow, ROI.)

So, what should they have done (or, what to do now that it appears they’ve overcommitted)?

First, understand Twitter. Do some research on the topic. Find out all the costs (opportunity cost, maintenance cost, etc.). Assess the risks. In fact, do a whole SWOT analysis. “Social media ROI” comes in many forms. Companies often make the mistake of thinking ROI can take one form ONLY — short-term monetary gain.

Find out which entities have been most (un)successful at Twitter, and learn from them. Your goal is to determine if there’s a way to make Twitter work for your company, or if you should avoid it.

Second, assuming you’re going ahead with Twitter, lay out your objectives. Arbitrary though they might be, set a goal. A realistic goal…a stretch goal. You need something…a baseline, a hurdle…against which to gauge your success. Eventually, you gain experience and you adjust your goals.

Third, formulate your acceptable use policy (AUP) for Twitter around those goals. Policy can help — or hurt the success of your venture. There are plenty of Twitter policies online — borrow them, if you need to.  Be careful not to duplicate them — their situations are not the same as yours.

Make sure your policy is clear. Establish roles and responsibilities — who should be using Twitter, and under what circumstances. Let your users know what is and isn’t permissible. Let them know what the penalties are for one-time, multiple, minor, and major policy violations.

Fourth, revisit the policy periodically, or when special circumstances warrant. A policy written in stone isn’t a good policy.

And if you sense you jumped into the Twitter pool headfirst without checking the water’s depth? Well, you know better now, I hope. (If you decide to drop Twitter, you won’t be the first. Or the last.)

So, is it time for your organization to establish a social media policy?

* Some of the anecdotal evidence:

• ESPN Responds to Criticism, Publishes Social Media Policy (http://mashable.com/2009/08/04/espn-social-media/)
• Post Editor Ends Tweets, New Guidelines Issued (http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ombudsman-blog/2009/09/post_editor_ends_tweets_as_new.html)
• NFL Issues New Twitter Policy (http://views.washingtonpost.com/theleague/nflnewsfeed/2009/08/league-issues-new-twitter-policy.html)

On January 7, 2010, Timothy Hendron, 51, a longtime employee of ABB’s north St. Louis, Missouri, plant, reportedly took the lives of three coworkers, wounded five others, and took his own life.  This is just one of the latest incidents of worker-on-worker violence that have been on the increase in the last several decades.

In retrospect, of course, it is always clear that “the signs were there”. The individual was under a lot of stress…he was disaffected, alienated, a guy who kept to himself…bills were mounting…he had an unusual interest in weapons…and on, and on. Not everyone fits “the profile”, but most are close enough that we invariably ask “Why didn’t they (we) see it coming?”, or “Why didn’t somebody do something about it before it got to that point?”

Unfortunately, there is no “one size fits all” answer — the answers are as varied and as complex as humanity itself. Recognizing, though, that workplace violence is the ultimate antisocial act against social animals, there are things we can do to and for one another to minimize the risk, among them:

• Showing respect for one another;
• Getting to know coworkers;
• Being better communicators (which means being much better listeners);
• Taking an interest in coworkers outside the workplace;
• At least occasionally, putting coworkers’ interests ahead of our own;
• Watching out for one another;
• Not thinking “someone else can take care of it” or “it’s not my job”;
• Becoming more aware of and responsive to coworkers’ needs, stated and unstated;
• Knowing coworkers well enough that you know what their “normal” is; and
• Having the courage and compassion to help when their “normal” isn’t there.

Does your company have a workplace anti-violence policy? Better yet, do you have a personal policy regarding the prevention of violence in the workplace?

“A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.”
(Lao Tzu)

Thank you for sharing your thoughts.

For good or bad, it’s the policies we make that drive our actions.  Our policies reflect our goals and priorities.  They drive our behavior, our processes, and our procedures.

Our business procedures are dependent on policy and without good company policy, our procedures do not provide value.  Bad policy cannot be corrected by procedures, no matter how well the procedures are written.  Here’s an example of bad policy…

The Glass-Steagall Act (aka, the Banking Act of 1933 - USA) was enacted in response to the massive failure of commercial banks in the early thirties.  Commercial and investment banking, among others, were separated in an attempt to minimize risk.

This risk-averse policy appeared to work for the economy in general, though it didn’t work for large investors and institutions that wanted to “compete with overseas institutions that (were)n’t hamstrung by archaic laws”.  Totally ignoring the issue of increased risk, banking and investment moguls pushed for a law like Gramm-Leach-Bliley…and they got it.

They (Citibank, Bear Stearns, etc.) managed to undo Depression-era restrictions on consolidating and diversifying, and they grew dozens of times over.  That is, until their hubris caught up with them and the “Great Recession” exploded onto the economic scene.  Derivatives processes — they failed in part because they were overly complex; they also failed because of the economic policies that allowed them to exist.

So what’s old is new again.  Members of the U.S. House and Senate are pushing for reenactment of Glass-Steagall, believing — perhaps rightly — that we all paid the price for this ill-advised change in banking and investment policy and we have to correct it.  And, who of sound mind can blame them?

Another possible example of bad policy: There was a story just this week of H&M and Wal-Mart stores, located on the isle of Manhattan, not merely tossing out unsold clothing but destroying it, making sure it could never be used or sold.  In this economy — and in the middle of winter, no less — a reasonable person has to wonder why that clothing wasn’t given intact to any of dozens of charitable organizations.

Granted, the parent corporation in each case probably doesn’t have a policy of “if we can’t sell it, we’re destroying it”.  I also hope no store manager would be so stupid as to have a procedure, formal or otherwise, for destroying unsold merchandise.

However, one has to wonder, “Did one employee ‘go rogue’ on the company? Or were employees told to ’destroy this stuff and get rid of it’?”  Just because it’s not written doesn’t mean it’s not policy.  Or, maybe they’ve had a policy of not putting unsold clothing out where someone could sell it (and for nothing but profit) and somebody just took that policy and ran with it.

I know what some of you must be thinking: “Well, I don’t run my business like that.  Besides, we’re much smaller than they are, and we have everything under control.”

Consider this, though. You’re in business to make money, and naturally you want to grow your business.  What policies do you have that enable you to do that?

Now, consider that in this hyper-competitive business environment — made all the more cutthroat by the global recession — a company might find itself bending its policies.  Oh, maybe just a little, at first.  Then, maybe a little more.

How far would you be willing to bend?  Which of your policies might have bent already under the strain of the recession?  (Your policy on wages? Your quality policy?  Others?)  Are these policies likely to bend back when the economy improves?

You’ve heard my opinion.  Now let’s hear yours.

******

By the way, here are some excellent articles on this topic:

• “The AIG Fiasco Keeps Getting Worse“, Fortune online, 7 Jan 2010
• “U.S. Senators Propose Reinstating Glass-Steagall Act“, Bloomberg online, 16 Dec 2009
• “The Curse of Policy-Based Evidence“, Science & Development Network, 13 Aug 2009