I’ve been thinking a lot about policies lately.

About how they’re sometimes necessary and sometimes not. About don’t scar on the first cut and about how organizational scar tissue can spread to cover related areas of the organization.

I’ve been thinking about the freedom of young companies with no policies, and about the freedom of ossified companies with a policy for everything.

And about how to roll out policies as effectively as possible, and how to make unpalatable policy changes more palatable, and about how to make compliance easier, and about how to communicate policies to new members of an organization who weren’t there for the initial rollout.

I’ve been thinking a lot about policies lately.

After thinking about policies for long enough, I started to ask one of my favorite sense-making questions: what’s the purpose of this? Specifically, here, “what’s the benefit of policies?”

There are policies that are in place for legal reasons, or to make a department’s job easier or more consistent (finance, HR, and IT are the classic examples here). But even in those cases, “because it makes it easier for HR” is too easy an answer.

Take a simple PTO policy, for example. “Everyone gets 4 weeks of PTO a year. PTO must be approved by the employee’s manager and recorded on the employee’s timesheet.” It’s easy for HR. Making it easy for HR serves the organization. HR does not need to do an exhaustive analysis every time Gerald wants to take an afternoon off. Gerald’s manager just needs to verify that Gerald still has enough PTO available.

That policy also serves the employee. Gerald doesn’t need to worry that someone in HR has it out for him and will block all his PTO requests. He doesn’t need to worry, much, that his manager only wants him to be able to take two weeks off every year. Gerald just needs to budget his policy-granted PTO and request it as needed.

I believe that most of the policies at most of the companies in the world are in place to serve the organization, not the employee. I haven’t seen most of the policies at most of the companies in the world, so I’m guessing here. The hypothetical PTO policy above is easy to administer, takes PTO off the table for negotiations, and places very few restrictions on the organization.

The way policies are written gives enormous insight into the mindset of the organization that created them. If you want to know who the organization cares about (i.e., should you believe “employees are our most valuable asset!”, or similar slogans like “the customer is always right!”), take a look at their policies. Who does it restrict? Who does it require something of?

Let’s make a minor tweak to that policy. “Everyone gets 4 weeks of PTO a year. PTO must be approved by the employee’s manager and recorded on the employee’s timesheet. If the employee has PTO remaining, the PTO request must be approved within two days of the request being made, or a written explanation of the denial delivered to the employee and the manager’s manager.”

The amount of PTO stays the same. The process for approval stays the same. But now the organization is placing restrictions on its actions. A manager can’t “pocket veto” the request or deny the request without explanation. The time frame and explanation for denial both are requirements for organizational behavior. The policy has become much more balanced in whom it serves.

That last sentence is a bit misleading. It’d be more accurate to say the change in the policy reflects a mindset shift by the organization to more highly value responsiveness to employee PTO requests. Policies by themselves are simply reflections of organizational values.

Policies exist along the swing of a pendulum. On one side are policies that solely benefit the organization. On the other are policies that solely benefit the employee. I’d be willing to bet that most policies exist most of the way to the organization side of the pendulum.

The next time you write a policy, or roll out a policy, or demand a policy be written, think about the pendulum. Where does the policy fit on the swing of this pendulum?

Or, if you’re willing to challenge yourself and your organization, place all of your policies on the Policy Pendulum. Start with written policies, but then add in the unwritten ones (“you’re supposed to get a new laptop every three years, but they really won’t approve it until it’s been four years, unless you can convince Gladys it’s not working right”).

If you’re really brave, compare what you’ve found to your organization’s stated values or catchphrases. “We value innovation and autonomy” but our policies only restrict our employees. “We follow a well-defined process to guarantee results” but our policies don’t require the process to be followed.

Without evidence, I believe that an organization that places its policies on the Policy Pendulum congruent with its stated values will outperform an organization that does not. In the organization that does not, confusion and grumbling will result. But in the organization that sets up policies to mirror its values, everyone will benefit from the resulting sense of consistency and correctness.