Needless protocols in the name of quality checks stifle work and creativity and lead to frustration.
What exactly is the fuss around meeting members of any Royal Family?
Here’s a sample of the protocols and rules that people who visit the Buckingham Palace are to follow:
- They are to address the Queen as ‘Your Majesty’ followed by ‘Ma’am’. For the King, it is ‘Your Royal Highness’ followed by ‘Sir’
- At the dining table, once the queen stops eating, everyone stops eating
- Members of the royal family can’t play monopoly
- No one can turn their back on the queen after a conversation, she has to turn back first
These are just a sample.
You can read the full list here.
Most of them look senseless and ridiculous, which they are.
It’s basically a bunch of rules written by someone and followed blindly for everyone because well, they are ‘protocol’.
Why do we invent protocols in the first place? And what is a protocol? A rule? A set of rules?
We all face protocols in daily life.
“Have you got that person’s signature?”
“Has that person seen it?”
“Have you cc’d her on the mail. She needs to be cc’d on all mails, doesn’t matter if she doesn’t read it.”
“Everything is ready. Just need his approval, otherwise we can’t move forward.”
“You should have told me before presenting. It’s protocol.”
Protocols are mostly man-made and invented and most times, serve no purpose at all. Most religious ceremonies are protocols, which is why if you don’t believe in it, you’ll wonder what the fuss is all about. Not always, but many times, they make someone look more important than they are. They inundate big organizations and bureaucracies with protocols and procedures that make getting work done hard.
So we are always pleasantly surprised when someone breaks protocol (in a good way).
The Chairman eats with the employees.
The President walks on a street and interacts with common people.
A team leader gives his people the freedom to schedule their days.
A boss doesn’t insist on seeing all presentations as she trusts her team.
The reason a lot of protocol exists (barring the nonsensical ones) is to ensure that nothing untoward occurs. If everyone is in the loop or in the know, nothing can go wrong.
Then what about quality checks? Are they also a part of protocol?
Herbert Diess and Hans Dieter Pötsch, Volkswagen’s chief executive and chairman are in the news again. They are accused of manipulating emission levels for innumerable Volkswagen cars to enable them to pass emission tests in the laboratories and later released cars that emitted up to 40 times more emissions.
Whenever a huge scandal like this blows up, the first question that we ask is — what happened to all the protocols to be followed? What about the quality checks? Wasn’t anyone looking?
Here’s where the debate gets interesting.
Most quality control checks are protocols. They are a series of procedures to be followed to ensure a certain quality is being met.
When a product is certified organic, we trust that someone has done the check. We have no way of knowing, but we trust it.
When a food product is stamped by a food authority, we trust someone has checked the quality.
Again, we often come across aberrations.
Cars and products are recalled en masse because they have skimped on the quality check part.
All of this boils down to one thing — you need to understand which protocols are aiding you and the ones that aren’t.
If your project, or business, or idea isn’t moving forward, it might be time to re-look at the protocols in place. If you require million permissions to get something relatively simple off the ground, you might need to see things in a new light. That’s why many people turn to freelance projects, start their own businesses, or work in places with fewer levels — they’re sick and tired of all the protocols they have to go through to get their work seen or their ideas heard.
Most committees and chains of command set up for quality checks don’t act that way. Giving an opinion for the sake of it or to justify one’s presence doesn’t qualify as a quality check. It’s just a hindrance.
Needless protocols in the name of quality checks stifle work and creativity and lead to frustration.
If a protocol is coming in the way of you producing work, find a way around it or find a place with fewer protocols.
Most of the quality checks we do are perfection checks — that is, we wait for something that we deem to be perfect before we launch.
Mixing up quality with perfection is the death knell for most ideas that end up dying in their infancy.
Your writing, your cooking, your podcasting, your presenting, your analytical thinking — all of them can get better.
For that, you need to remove all the imaginary protocols and perfection checks in your head.
