I love this post by Chris Grams.  Maybe we sometimes have too many policies!

Daniel Pink published an interesting piece over the weekend in The Telegraph about Netflix's innovative corporate policy of not having a vacation policy.

Meaning, employees don't have a set number of days they get off each year, but instead can take vacation whenever they want. From the article:

At Netflix, the vacation policy is audaciously simple and simply audacious. Salaried employees can take as much time off as they'd like, whenever they want to take it. Nobody – not employees themselves, not managers – tracks vacation days. In other words, Netflix's holiday policy is to have no policy at all.

This may sound like a recipe for disaster to you, but it hasn't turned out that way for Netflix. In fact, as the rest of article highlights, not having a lot of corporate policies may be a fantastic strategy for engaging 21st century workers.

In the article, Netflix VP of Corporate Communications Steve Swasey calls rules, policies, regulations, and stipulations "innovation killers."

After spending 10 years in Red Hat, a company run the open source way, I couldn't agree more. In fact, Daniel Pink's conclusion halfway through the article that "freedom and responsibility, long considered fundamentally incompatible, actually go together quite well" was exactly our experience.

Early in my time at Red Hat, I participated in a project to uncover the corporate values, a process I outlined in a blog post last year.

The end result was a set of values anchored on one end by freedom and on the other end by accountability. We always depicted the four Red Hat values balanced on a fulcrum, like in the image below:

At Red Hat, employees were given a lot of freedom, much more than in any other company I'd ever worked for. Yet Red Hat also had a strong culture of accountability. What we found over the years (these values were first articulated back in 2002) would probably be counterintuitive to many people:

The more freedom the company gave, the more accountability it received in return.

We watched this play out over and over in different parts of the company. More freedom in a department = more personal accountability from employees in that department. Conversely, the less freedom, the less accountability.

Keeping this balance between freedom and accountability (and preserving the freedom side as the company grew) became a key part of the Red Hat culture, and, I would argue, the most crucial piece of our employee engagement strategy.

So Netflix, I salute you. Well played, indeed.

Red Hat never went as far as getting rid of its vacation policy, but at my current company, New Kind, we've never had a vacation policy, and after reading this article and taking a quick partner vote today, we probably never will.

Maybe New Kind will even go a step further and enact a "no policy" policy of our own.

Do you have any stories where removing policies and increasing employee freedom actually increased accountability? If so, I'd love to hear them.

I often hear people being challenged with Accountability.  I liked Laura Stack's definition and suggestions for improving in this article. 

Accountability involves your commitment to yourself and others. It's about the promises we make to the people who rely on us—and to ourselves. It's about consistently hitting goals, meeting deadlines, fulfilling promises, and committing to teamwork.

The truly Accountable understand that in almost every circumstance, they're responsible for who they are and where they are.

A high level of self discipline and Accountability can be achieved by consistently practicing the following precepts:

1. Take personal responsibility for handling your time and productivity. Never lay the blame on anyone else. Unless you live in a totalitarian state or are an indentured servant (unlikely), then when it comes to productivity, it's all up to you. If something or someone gets in your way, it's your duty to go around.

2. When a process seems unusually long and inefficient, do what you can to make it easier for everyone. Just because something's been done a certain way for a long time doesn't mean it's the best way to do it now. If you find a problem, step forward and fix it if you can—or offer a solution if you can't.

3. Rather than waste even small amounts of productive time, get right to work. Breaks are necessary, but don't overindulge in them. Self-discipline is important in any field of endeavor. Without it, deadlines get missed, you feel guilty—and guilt sucks the energy right out of you. Or you get fired. Or both.

4. When you have all the information you need to proceed, make decisions immediately. You have to make critical decisions quickly whenever it's necessary and you're empowered to do so. Don't let worry or social inertia slow you down, because motion beats meditation every time if you have all the data you need.

5. Understand the difference between being busy and being productive. Don't let little tasks keep you from getting things done. Most of us spend too much time tending to minor issues that other people can handle more cheaply and efficiently, and never have enough time to do all the really important tasks.

The SuperCompetent take charge of their own productivity because, ultimately, they realize that it all comes down to them. They accept the blame when it's due, not just the credit.

They also do all they can to make things work better for themselves and others, and make every effort to become comfortable with making decisions, without letting the possible negative consequences paralyze them.

Personal responsibility is easy to observe in people who have it. Make sure people can observe it in you.