“I’m sorry, sir, but that’s against our policy.”

There’s something about that phrase that sets my teeth on edge. Maybe it’s being called “sir” — yet another sign of my advancing age. But I don’t think so.

Policies exist to make sure everyone (or every situation that falls into a defined category) is treated the same. But as a customer, or as an employee, I don’t necessarily want to be treated the same.

I want to be treated fairly, yes. But that’s different.

Speaking of treating people fairly, in last week’s column differentiating policies and procedures I neglected to credit IS Survivalist Harry Kriz for the suggestion. Thanks, Harry.

Sadly, I can’t give attribution to the friend and colleague who provided the following anecdote from the Disney organization (by all accounts, including his, a well-run company) which underscores the limitations to documented procedures:

“When Oriental Land Company and Mitsui Railroad entered into the agreement with the Walt Disney Company to build Tokyo Disneyland in the early 1980’s, they required a full set of Standard Operating Procedure manuals for the running of the Park. While Disney was, and remains, more disciplined than most companies in its documentation, this requirement still employed 43 writers for a year.

“As a result, the Japanese management team had a full instruction manual for a Disneyland Park. Many would argue that Tokyo Disneyland is the best run Disney park in the world. But the manual-bound mentality had a drawback. One day, not long after opening the juice stand in the middle of Fantasyland ran out of paper cups. The SOP only had procedures for ordering paper cups for the next day, not during the middle of the day, so the manager closed the stand. (The normal, but undocumented, procedure employed by Disneyland managers for years to solve this problem was to borrow some cups from a neighboring Fantasyland restaurant).”

The moral of this story: If you do try to document procedures for every situation, or even if you don’t, add one more at the end: “If none of these procedures fit, improvise.”

And then, to wrap up this topic, my UK-based Perot Systems colleague Dan Heany offers this:

“Your latest article reminded me of the policy manual we had when I was an officer in the [London] Metropolitan Police. It comprised TWO, 6 inch ring binders and contained policies to cover all the foul ups that had happened since the force was founded in 1829!

“One that particularly stuck in my mind was the policy on ‘How to stop a runaway horse’ (clearly a very important topic in 1829). It started with the paragraph: ‘1. In order to stop a runaway horse, firstly, run in the same direction as the horse …’

“This always raised a question for me about the constable who caused that paragraph to be written — did he run away or did he run into the horse do you suppose?”

Which leads to one more piece of advice: In addition to asking yourself, every time you write a policy or procedure, “Do we really need to standardize this?” do yourself one more favor: Include a sunset date. Especially in this age of cheap storage, it’s way too easy to just let policies accumulate. And if you do your employees may figure you’re just horsing around.