Small business. Big game. Александр Высоцкий

and disagreements about it.

      An unskilled manager can easily kill the spirit of the game just by the way he presents his instructions; rules may be fundamentally reasonable, but if they do not lead employees to understand how these rules facilitate the achievement of goals, people will perceive them as an encroachment on their personal freedom.

      Governments have been extremely inept at this; they create laws for reasons that are often utterly unclear for those who are supposed to obey them. As a result, in order to achieve compliance with these laws, it is necessary to create a complex control mechanism and employ an entire army of bureaucrats to ensure that the laws are enforced. Such laws are an example of incompetent administration. After all, no one will dispute the requirements of the criminal code, and its use is obvious to every honest citizen. But with respect to tax law, there is no such unity, because there are many who do not approve of the way their tax money is spent.

      Fortunately, everything is much simpler in business, and there are usually no such obstacles to creating rules that are reasonable and that help employees both to achieve self-fulfillment and to accomplish team goals. You could say that proper administration enables a person to maintain a balance between his capacity for self-expression as an individual and his self-expression as a member of a group, thereby making life more harmonious. A common error in this area is giving employees the impression that they work at the company only in order to earn money for a satisfying life.