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Sep 8, 2021Liked by Rohit Krishnan

There should be a optimal balance between rules and discretion. As described , in a big org , rules are necessary. But the success will depend on how the workforce follow the rules understanding the spirit behind them...

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Reading this I thought there may be a "rules cycle" in organizations. Most organizations start with no rules, relying on discretion.

Discretion does not scale and relies on specific people -> implement simple rules

Simple rules are imperfect and vulnerable to Goodharting -> implement more and more complex rules

Rules become too many and too rigid -> discretion is needed again to scale back rules and revitalise the org

It sounds like the theory in linguistics about languages cycling between different morphologies (isolating, agglutinating and inflectional).

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