How ordinary rules become powerful, why nobody questions them, and how the decisions we inherit can quietly take control of our lives.
A Spelling Mistake That Needed Six Approvals
Ashik Mahmud shared a workplace experience on LinkedIn that caught my attention. Someone on his team noticed a spelling mistake in a document that was going to a client. Correcting it was a two-minute task. Yet the team needed three days just to get permission to begin.
The request had to pass through six steps. Someone first documented the issue. Then a ticket was created. The team lead reviewed it, the matter waited for a weekly meeting, Ashik gave his final approval, and only then could the correction be made. By the time the team was allowed to fix a spelling mistake, three days had passed.
Each step had a reason behind it. Documentation kept a record. The team lead was expected to protect quality. The weekly meeting kept people informed. Ashik’s approval gave him control over the work. Nobody had introduced these steps with the intention of wasting time. Each one probably seemed useful when viewed on its own.
The trouble appeared when the six steps were placed together. A small correction had become a process involving several people, a meeting and a senior manager’s permission. The team had spent far more time getting approval than doing the actual work.
Ashik removed three steps. Team leads could approve smaller operational tasks themselves. The team no longer had to wait for a weekly meeting, and the request form and ticket were combined. He reported that issues which had taken three days were often being resolved on the same day. He also said that decision quality had not fallen; in many cases, it improved because the people closest to the problem had the information needed to act.
There is one detail in his account that deserves more attention than the spelling mistake. Ashik admitted that removing his own approval was uncomfortable. He had thought his final check was protecting the work. When he looked at the requests more closely, he noticed that most of his approvals took less than a minute. He was often confirming a decision that the team was already capable of making.
His post raises a question that reaches far beyond office procedures: how many things do we continue doing because nobody wants to be the person who asks whether they are still necessary?
A Rule Can Outlive the Reason Behind It
Most rules begin with a problem. Someone makes a decision because something has gone wrong, or because they want to prevent a risk. The decision works, so other people adopt it. New employees learn the process from experienced employees. Children learn family customs from their parents. A community passes its habits to people who were not present when those habits first began.
With time, the reason can disappear while the rule remains. People remember what they must do, but not what the rule was supposed to achieve. The process becomes part of daily life, and asking about its purpose can sound like refusing to cooperate.
Think about a family that discourages a young person from entering a certain profession. Years ago, someone in the family may have suffered a serious loss in that field. The warning began as protection. The child grows up hearing it so often that the profession itself starts to look dangerous, even though the conditions have changed. Nobody asks whether the original experience still applies. The old fear has become advice, and the advice has become a limit on someone else’s future.
There is a difference between learning from the past and allowing the past to make every decision. Earlier generations had knowledge that we need. They also had fears, incomplete information and problems that may no longer exist. We cannot judge every old decision by today’s conditions, but we should not force today’s people to live by yesterday’s circumstances either.
A 2024 review in the Annual Review of Psychology examines how social norms develop, spread between generations and remain in place. It also discusses cultural mismatch: a practice that once helped a group can become harmful when the environment changes. The research gives us a useful way to understand why customs sometimes survive long after their original purpose has weakened. Read Norm Dynamics by Gelfand, Gavrilets and Nunn.
The age of a rule tells us how long it has survived. It does not tell us whether it is still fair.
People Often Protect What They Have Learned to Follow
Questioning an old rule can make people uncomfortable because the rule may be connected to someone they respect. A person who asks why a family custom exists may be seen as disrespectful. An employee who questions a manager’s process may be treated as difficult. A student who challenges a familiar method may be told to stop making things complicated.
The discussion then changes. Instead of explaining the purpose of the rule, people begin defending the people who introduced it. A question about usefulness becomes a question about loyalty. The person asking for a reason is expected to prove that they are not insulting anyone, while the person defending the rule may not have to explain it at all.
There is another reason people protect old systems. They have learned how to live inside them. A worker knows whom to approach for approval. A family knows which subjects to avoid. A group knows what behaviour brings praise and what brings criticism. Even when people dislike an arrangement, they may prefer its familiar problems to the uncertainty of change.
Some people also benefit from the existing arrangement. A process may give one manager more control. A custom may protect the position of a particular group. A system may give people with connections easier access to opportunities. Those who receive the benefits may describe the arrangement as normal, while those who carry its costs may find it difficult to challenge.
This is why the question should not end at, “Who made this rule?” We should also ask who benefits from keeping it, who has to follow it, and who is allowed to make exceptions. Sometimes the people who speak most strongly about protecting a system are the people who have the least reason to change it.
Silence Can Make a Whole Group Look Certain
Imagine joining a workplace where nobody openly disagrees with a senior manager. You attend meetings and notice that people accept decisions quickly. Later, you hear employees discussing the same decisions privately, and several of them have serious concerns. Nobody wants to raise those concerns in front of the manager because they have seen what happens to people who do.
A new employee may mistake the silence for agreement. They assume that experienced colleagues must know something they do not. They begin to accept the same decisions. When another new employee arrives, the group looks even more united.
The manager may believe that everyone supports the way things are done. In reality, many people may be waiting for someone else to speak first. A workplace can appear peaceful while its employees have stopped being honest.
This happens in families and communities too. People may agree in public because disagreement carries a social cost. A person may remain silent to protect a relationship, avoid an argument or keep their place in the group. The silence is real, but the agreement is not.
There is a danger in treating popular opinion as proof. A claim can become widely accepted because people keep repeating it. A person can be judged by a story that nobody has checked. A group can defend a practice because every member assumes the others have good reasons for following it.
When we repeat a claim about another person, we should remember that our words may reach people who have no chance to answer. A false statement can cost someone a job, a friendship or the trust of their own family. The person who started the rumour may forget it the next day. The person whose name was damaged may spend years trying to repair it.
It takes very little effort to pass information along. It can take a person a very long time to live with the consequences.
Fairness Is Tested When the Truth Goes Against Us
A manager may demand honesty from employees but hide an error when it affects their own performance. A parent may ask children to admit their mistakes but refuse to apologise when they are wrong. Someone may speak about equal treatment until a close friend needs an exception.
We often judge the same action differently depending on who has done it. When a person we like makes a mistake, we remember the pressure they were under. When someone we dislike makes the same mistake, we may treat it as proof of bad character. The facts have not changed. The person judging them has.
This becomes especially serious when someone has power over another person’s future. Consider a promotion decision. Two employees have similar experience, but one is a close friend of the manager. The manager may believe the friend is more reliable. They remember that person’s successes and overlook their mistakes. The other employee receives a stricter review.
The decision may be described as a professional judgment, but the people in the workplace can see what happened. They learn that being close to the person in charge may matter more than doing good work. Some begin to spend more time building relationships with powerful people than improving their skills. Others stop believing that honest effort will be recognised.
The cost spreads beyond the person who missed the promotion. A whole team may lose trust in the process. People begin to protect themselves rather than contribute openly. The organisation may still have a written policy about equal opportunity, but its daily decisions teach a different lesson.
Fairness has little meaning if it applies only when it benefits us. Its real test comes when an honest decision costs us an advantage.
The Person Making a Decision May Never See Its Human Cost
A person who creates a rule may never experience the effort required to follow it. A manager can introduce a reporting process without spending hours completing the reports. A public office can demand several documents without understanding how far someone must travel to obtain them. A family elder can decide what a younger member should do without having to live with the result.
The decision-maker sees a completed form, a target or a result. The person affected may see a day of lost wages, a missed appointment, extra travel expenses or another chance that has slipped away. Both people are dealing with the same decision, but they do not carry the same burden.
Think of someone who needs a small correction in an official document. The correction itself is simple, but the person must visit an office, take time away from work, arrange transport and wait for an official to become available. If the process requires another visit, the person may lose another day’s income. For someone with savings and flexible work, this may be an inconvenience. For someone living close to the edge of their budget, it may mean less food or an unpaid bill.
The official may see one more application. The person standing in front of the desk may be worried about losing a job, missing a deadline or disappointing a family that is depending on them. A process that looks small from one side can become a serious burden from the other.
A fair system should be examined from the position of the person who has the least power to change it. Can they ask for help? Can they explain their circumstances? Is there a way to correct an error without paying a heavy price? If the answer is no, the system may be orderly without being fair.
Money Can Turn Dependence Into Control
Money gives people options. It can provide safety, education, time and the freedom to leave a harmful situation. These are important benefits. But when one person controls something another person cannot live without, the relationship can become unequal.
A worker may depend on one employer for income. If the employer changes working hours without proper notice, the worker may have little choice but to accept. They may need the salary for rent, food, school fees or medical bills. The employer sees a change in the schedule. The worker sees a risk to the family’s stability.
The two people may have signed the same agreement, but their freedom to reject its conditions is very different. One person can change the arrangement. The other may have nowhere else to go.
This is why wealth should not be judged only by what someone owns. We should also look at what their wealth allows them to decide for other people. A business can create jobs and still treat workers unfairly. A powerful organisation can provide a useful service and still make it difficult for customers to challenge its decisions. A person can become successful while those who depend on them lose the ability to speak freely.
Resources carry responsibility because they affect lives beyond the person who controls them. The more power someone has over another person’s choices, the more carefully that power should be used.
A worker should not have to surrender their dignity to keep a salary. A customer should not have to accept unfair treatment because there is no other provider. A person in need should not have to beg for what is already their rightful due.
Why a Bad System Can Continue for Years
People sometimes ask why an organisation does not remove a process that wastes time, or why a community does not change a custom that causes harm. The answer is not always that people fail to notice the problem.
A system develops connections around itself. Employees are trained to use it. Money is spent supporting it. Jobs are created to manage it. Some people gain authority through it. Others fear that replacing it may create problems they cannot predict. Even people who want change may disagree about what should come next.
Economists Daron Acemoglu, Georgy Egorov and Konstantin Sonin studied why institutions persist and how they change. Their 2020 research explains how earlier institutional choices can shape the options available later. It also examines why groups may resist reform when they fear that a new arrangement could be less favourable to them. Read Institutional Change and Institutional Persistence.
This helps explain why a system can remain in place even when many people know it has weaknesses. Some people benefit from it. Others have built their working lives around it. Some may be afraid of losing what little security they have. The people who suffer under the system may have the least power to replace it.
A demand to change the system will not be enough if the people affected have no voice in designing the replacement. Otherwise, one group of people may leave while another takes their place, and the same unfairness continues under a different name.
Change should be measured by what happens to the people who live under the system, not by how impressive the new policy looks.
Children Learn What We Really Believe by Watching Us
A child may hear adults speak about respect, then watch them treat a poor relative differently from a wealthy one. Nobody needs to explain the difference. The child sees who receives attention and who is ignored.
A young employee may attend training about honesty, then watch a manager hide an error and blame someone with less authority. The training gives one lesson. The workplace gives another. When the two disagree, people often learn from what happens in front of them.
This is how values travel through daily life. People learn what is acceptable by watching what brings rewards and what brings punishment. They notice who can break a rule without consequences. They notice whose mistakes are forgiven and whose mistakes become part of their reputation.
A person may spend years teaching kindness and still pass on a belief that kindness is only owed to people who are useful. A manager may speak about teamwork while taking credit for an employee’s work. A family may teach children to tell the truth but punish them whenever the truth becomes uncomfortable.
The next generation does not receive only our advice. It receives the world we create around that advice. If we want people to respect others, they need to see respect given to people who cannot offer anything in return. If we want honesty, people need to see that telling the truth does not automatically lead to punishment.
Our behaviour becomes part of someone else’s education, whether we intend to teach or not.
The Person Who Questions a Rule May Be Protecting Everyone
There is a cost to asking questions. The person who raises a concern may be called difficult. The employee who challenges a manager may be left out of important discussions. Someone who refuses to repeat an unverified claim may be accused of defending the wrong person.
But many useful changes begin when someone refuses to treat an old practice as untouchable. They notice that a process wastes time. They see that one group receives different treatment. They ask why a decision is being made without hearing from the people who will have to live with it.
Questioning every rule for the sake of questioning it is not wisdom. Some procedures protect people from serious mistakes. Some customs keep families connected. Some boundaries are needed because other people’s rights and safety matter too. The important question is whether a rule still serves the purpose for which it was created.
A useful rule should be able to explain itself. If it protects people, we should be able to understand whom it protects and how. If it creates a burden, we should be able to examine whether that burden is necessary. If it harms people, its age should not prevent us from correcting it.
The person asking the question may not have the full answer. They may even be wrong about some details. But the question should be examined on its merits. Attacking the person who raises it does not solve the problem.
A group becomes stronger when people can point out mistakes without fearing that they will lose their place in the group.
What We Leave for People We May Never Meet
Ashik’s workplace example began with a spelling mistake. The team did not need a new department or expensive technology to fix the problem. It needed someone to look at the process as a whole and accept that one of the approvals was no longer adding enough value to justify the delay.
That small decision affected more than the speed of one task. It gave team leads room to make decisions. It reduced the time people spent waiting. It allowed the people closest to the work to use their own judgment. The person who removed the approval also had to accept that not every decision needed to pass through him.
The same responsibility appears in larger parts of life. A parent may pass on a fear that limits a child’s choices. A manager may keep a rule because removing it would reduce their control. A person may repeat a claim that damages someone else’s name. A powerful group may defend an arrangement because changing it would mean sharing an advantage.
We cannot undo every decision inherited from the past. We can, however, decide what deserves to continue. If a belief is unfair, we should not protect it merely because it is familiar. If a process wastes people’s time, we should examine it before passing it to another team. If our authority makes someone else’s life difficult, we should listen to the person carrying that difficulty.
There is a human being at the end of every rule. Sometimes that person is a worker waiting for an approval. Sometimes it is a child who has been told that a certain future is not meant for them. Sometimes it is a person whose name has been damaged by a story nobody checked. Sometimes it is someone who has no power to refuse the conditions placed before them.
They may never meet the person who made the decision. They may never know why the rule exists. They only know what it has taken from them.
We should be careful about the things we call normal. A process that saves a manager a few minutes may cost a worker a day’s wages. A custom that protects one person’s comfort may close a door for someone younger. A careless statement may become a burden carried by a family that had no part in creating it.
The people who come after us will not inherit our explanations. They will inherit the results. When they ask why a rule exists, someone should be able to give them an honest answer. If nobody can, perhaps the rule deserves another look.
Before You Leave
My Book
A person can spend years trying to understand the world and still avoid the questions that matter most about their own conduct. We can explain our decisions, defend our opinions and find reasons for almost anything we do. But an explanation does not always make an action right. At some point, each of us has to look beyond what we intended and consider what our actions actually did to another human being.
My book is another part of this search for understanding. If you choose to read it, I hope you approach it with the same freedom I believe every reader should have: question what you find, think about what you accept, and never give up your own responsibility to examine the truth.
More of My Writing
The questions raised in this article do not belong to one subject. They appear in our homes, our work, our relationships, our use of knowledge and the way we treat people who cannot return a favour. I have explored some of these questions in other articles. Each one approaches human behaviour from a different direction.
- The Power of Being Human
What remains of our humanity when daily responsibilities, pressure and the pace of life leave little room to notice the people around us? - A Mind Full of Answers, but Missing Its Own Questions
We spend much of our time collecting other people’s conclusions. This article looks at what happens when we stop examining the thoughts that have quietly become our own. - Born With the Ability to Perceive, Yet Living Without Understanding
Seeing, hearing and receiving information are not the same as understanding. The difficult part begins when we have to examine our own judgments. - How Much of My Life Have I Actually Understood?
Years of experience do not automatically make us wise. Sometimes the most important question is how much of what we have lived through we have actually understood. - The Intelligence to Know What We Don’t Know
There is a difference between having knowledge and recognising its limits. This article examines why admitting uncertainty can be a sign of sound judgment. - The Knowledge That Cannot Be Taught
Information can be passed from one person to another, but the ability to act rightly when personal interests are involved requires something deeper. - The Human Mind Can Make Almost Any Lie Feel Like the Truth
Our strongest excuses often appear when accepting the truth would cost us something. This article explores how the mind protects what the heart does not want to lose. - The Most Frightening Thing About Human Nature Is How Quickly It Adapts to Wrongdoing
A wrong action can become a habit, a habit can become accepted behaviour, and accepted behaviour can eventually shape an entire environment. This piece examines that gradual change. - The Global Household Crisis: Why the Modern World Is Making It Harder to Live a Decent Life
Economic progress has little meaning for a family that cannot afford a stable and decent life. This article looks at the human consequences behind economic figures. - Why Knowing the Right Thing Is Still Not Enough
Knowing what is right does not guarantee that we will do it. The real test begins when our understanding asks us to change something we would rather keep.
If You Want to Continue the Conversation
I also write on Substack, where I share more thoughts and reflections beyond individual articles. You can find that writing here:
And if you believe independent writing and careful thought deserve room to continue, my Ko-fi page is here:
There is no obligation attached to either link. Reading is enough. A kind response, a disagreement supported by thought, or a question that makes an idea clearer can also add something valuable to a writer’s work.
One Last Thought
We often judge our lives by what we have managed to gain, but there is another measure that deserves equal attention: what has become of the people who have had to deal with our decisions? Did our knowledge make us more careful with the truth? Did our position make us fairer towards those with less power? Did our experience make us more understanding, or merely better at defending ourselves?
A person’s real influence does not end with the people who know their name. It continues through the decisions they leave behind, the habits they pass on, and the treatment they make others accept as normal.
We cannot control every result of our actions, but we can take greater care before setting them in motion. And when we discover that we were wrong, we can refuse to make our mistake someone else’s inheritance.
That is a form of progress worth taking seriously.
Leave a Reply