A tree does not plan to grow around a fence and it does not think about the metal wire that cuts into its bark but it simply expands and the wood swallows the steel until the two things are one.
If you walk through an old woods you will see these knots where the tree is lumpy and strange and you might think the tree is sick but it is actually just a record of a boundary that someone set ago.
The person who put up the wire is dead and the cows it was meant to keep inside are gone and the field is now just shadows and damp leaves but the tree still carries the scar and it still grows in a shape dictated by a piece of rusted metal that has no reason to be there anymore.
The Paving Stone History
It is a warm morning in the back of an office and the air smells like stale coffee and the new hire is sitting across from a supervisor who has a binder the size of a paving stone.
This binder is the accumulated history of every mistake that ever happened and it is the map of every fire that ever burned the building and every page is a reaction to a single moment of panic.
They get to page forty and they look at item forty-one and it says that the second vehicle does not depart before the first vehicle returns. The new hire is smart and she asks why they do it that way and she points out that sometimes people are waiting and the sun is hot and the second vehicle is just sitting there with the engine cold.
Rule Item 41: Procedural Fossil
“The second vehicle does not depart before the first vehicle returns.”
The supervisor looks at the page and then he looks at the wall and he says that is just how we do it and he says it with a finality that kills the conversation.
He does not know about the night in when a driver named Todd took the second van and forgot the jumper cables that were in the first van and he got stuck in a parking lot for three hours.
Todd has been gone for and they bought new jumper cables for every van in the fleet but the rule about the second vehicle is still there and it is eating the efficiency of the morning.
Fragility in the Checklist
The problem is that we treat these rules as if they are wisdom but they are really just scar tissue and scar tissue is tough but it is not flexible and it does not have the same nerves as the original skin.
When a company is young it has a mission and it has a reason for existing and the people who work there understand what they are trying to solve. They see a problem like the chaos of getting home from a music festival and they decide to fix it because they have been there themselves and they have felt the fear of being stranded in a dark lot with no ride and a dead phone.
But as the years go pass the mission starts to get covered in layers of procedure and the people who knew the reasons leave the room and they are replaced by people who only know the rules. Eventually you have a staff that can follow a checklist perfectly but they cannot handle a situation that is not on the page and that is the moment the operation becomes fragile.
I felt this myself the other day when a tourist stopped me on the sidewalk and asked for directions to the history museum and I pointed them toward the old train station.
I was not really looking at them and I was not thinking about the museum but I was following a mental habit of directing people toward the landmarks I usually visit and I sent them three blocks in the wrong direction.
I realized it as soon as they turned the corner and I felt that sharp pinch of regret because I had given them a rule instead of an answer. I was operating on a script that did not match the reality of where they wanted to go and that is exactly how a policy document fails when the world changes faster than the printer can run.
The Obedience of Ghosts
Every long running system carries these ghosts and they are expensive ghosts because they demand time and they demand obedience and they offer nothing in return but the promise that a mistake from ago will not happen again in exactly the same way.
We see this in the travel industry all the time where a guest has a problem at and the person on the phone says they cannot help because the system is locked or the key is in a different drawer.
The system is locked because someone once lost a key and the drawer is closed because someone once forgot a ledger and now the guest is standing in a hallway and they are paying the price for a ghost they never met. This is why it matters that a company is run by people who actually live the experience they are selling and who understand that the goal is not to follow the binder but to solve the problem for the person standing in front of them.
Muscle Over Scar Tissue
When you look at the way Live How You Want handles the weekend for EDC Orlando you can see the difference between scar tissue and actual muscle.
They have hosted more than guests since they started in and that is a lot of nights and a lot of potential rules that could have choked the life out of the business.
They stay at the Westgate Palace Hotel which is right on the Universal and I-Drive corridor and they have suites with two bedrooms and two bathrooms and full kitchens. It would be very easy for them to create a binder full of restrictions and rules about how people use the space or how they board the shuttles but they started the company because they were festival goers themselves.
They know that when you are tired at you do not want a rule about which door to use and you just want a shuttle that is there and a staff member who understands that you are exhausted.
The reason they have a 4.9 Google review rating is not because they have the best binder in the world but because they have the best judgment and they have kept the mission alive. They have 24/7 on site staff through the whole weekend and those people are there to handle the things that the rules did not anticipate.
If a guest loses a phone or if a group gets separated or if someone just needs a cup of coffee and a pastry in the morning the staff is there to make it happen. They do not have to check a document to see if they are allowed to be helpful because the helpfulness is the core of the service.
They offer monthly payment plans and they let you hold a reservation with 1% or 10% down because they know that life is complicated and people need flexibility more than they need a rigid contract.
“Most companies spend more money protecting themselves from their customers than they spend on serving them.”
– Lily A.J., Inventory Reconciliation Specialist
She was right and you can see it in the way some hotels charge resort fees at the very end of the stay as if they are trying to hide the cost until you are too tired to argue. It is a rule that exists to maximize revenue but it creates a layer of distrust that never goes away.
The Predictable Experience
At the Westgate Palace with the festival packages all those fees are included up front because the goal is a predictable experience. You get your shuttle ride from the same address where you sleep and the rides run every from until and there are even free afterparty rides to Margaritaville and Downtown.
It is a system designed by people who know that the value is in the peace of mind and not in the strict adherence to a procedural manual that was written for a world that does not exist anymore.
If you build a system based on fear you will eventually find yourself in a room full of rules and no one who knows how to break them when the situation demands it. The scar tissue will grow so thick that the heart of the business cannot beat and the staff will become like the supervisor with the heavy binder who cannot explain why the van is not moving.
They will watch the guests wait in the heat and they will feel a vague sense that something is wrong but they will look at item forty-one and they will stay silent because the rule is the only thing they have left.
The best operations are the ones that remember the bad night but do not let it define every night that follows. They take the lesson and they buy the jumper cables and then they throw away the rule that keeps the second vehicle from leaving because they know that the mission is to get people home.
They trust their staff to use their heads and they hire people who have been in the crowd and who know what it feels like to see those shuttle lights approaching at the end of a long day. They provide a welcome gift box and they make sure the two-bedroom suites are ready for a group of six and they focus on the guests who are happy instead of the one person who made a mistake ago.
Wisdom vs. Old Ghosts
When we stop asking why we do things we stop being useful and we start being just another knot in the tree. We should be looking at our binders every year and we should be asking which rules are wisdom and which ones are just old ghosts.
We should be willing to take the risk of a mistake if it means we can actually provide the service we promised to provide. The tourist I sent the wrong way eventually found the museum because they had a map on their phone but the business that follows the wrong rule does not always have a backup. It just has the binder and the binder is getting heavier every day and eventually it will be too heavy for anyone to carry.
If you are heading to Orlando in for the festival you want to be with the people who have been there and who have built a system that works because it understands the reality of the ground.
You want the full kitchen and the extra bathroom and the direct ride that does not involve surge pricing or waiting for a rideshare that might never come. You want the freedom to live how you want without being trapped by a rule that nobody remembers writing.
The goal is to move past the scar tissue and get back to the reason we started traveling in the first place which is to feel alive and to be safe and to know that someone is watching the gate while we dance.
Direct the answer, not the rule.