New Rule! [specific words or gestures] are now a criminal offence.
New Rule! I’m removing that guardrail and bending that rule — it’s slowing us down.
New Rule! The Board won’t agree to this — too conservative — so I’ll just not mention it. Forgiveness, not permission.
New Rule! That process is frustrating, so I’m going around it to get an important outcome.
Hollywood loves a rogue cop. The good guy who bends the rules to get the bad guy. The outlaw with the good heart. His unique approach makes the breakthrough that tired old “procedure” couldn’t. “We know he’s guilty, but stupid court rules won’t let us bring him in.” Where’s Batman, or Deadpool, when you need him?
Social justice (social conservative) advocates love a ‘new rule’ or a ‘ban the …….’ They see an injustice, and demand a rule change to, in their view, make it fair for the victims of some harm. One bad decision or action and they want to change the rules for everyone.
It’s seductive logic. In leadership it shows up quietly: in policy calls, goal setting, resource allocation, expectations applied unevenly. Usually not malice. Expedience. We forget that when we open a door — make or bend a rule to solve a problem in our favour — we don’t get to choose who walks through it next.
No individual, however sincere or capable, holds power indefinitely. Our job is to build a system that outlasts us — one where the system is in charge, not the person running it. The rule of law is the only approach that doesn’t care who’s in the room.
Which is why, before any significant call, two very old ideas earn their keep.
John Rawls called his the Veil of Ignorance: design the rules for a society without knowing what your own life in it will look like. Rich or poor. Healthy or sick. Smart, strong, neither, or both. If you didn’t know who you’d be under this rule — would you still make it?
Immanuel Kant got to the same place two centuries earlier from a different direction. His Categorical Imperative: act only on principles you could will to be universal. If a rule doesn’t hold when applied to everyone, including you, it isn’t really a principle.
Neither Rawls nor Kant is asking you to be selfless. They’re asking you to be consistent. To notice when your confident moral position happens to benefit you personally, and to ask whether it would survive the veil.
Most leaders I work with are genuinely good people trying to make good decisions. And most, if pressed, would admit some of those decisions look a little different depending on who’s on the receiving end. Not corrupt. Not malicious. Just human. Would you set that KPI if you were the one delivering on it? Would you let that behaviour slide if the person weren’t so critical to the numbers?
The right decisions tend to survive that test. The ones that don’t — the ones that feel reasonable from your perspective — are worth a second look.
If a policy is still the right policy even when you’re one of the people it costs, it’s probably a good policy.
Nigel