A Story About the Unwritten Rules

It is Tuesday just after ten, and the plan lies printed out at every place in the meeting room. Coloured boxes, clear arrows, every role with a name behind it. Outside, the July heat lies over the car park; inside it is pleasantly cool. The projector throws the heading onto the wall: Decisions where the work is. I have worked towards this moment for three months, and I have never been better prepared.

As head of procurement at Halberg I have been responsible since the spring for a new decision-making structure. The idea is simple. Whoever is close to the matter decides it. No more supplier changes across my desk, no more approvals three levels up. We have a roadmap, we have roles, we have communications that are cleaner than anything I have ever put together here. On paper everyone is on board. In the survey four weeks ago, nine out of ten wrote that they would like more responsibility.

Today the first real decision is to be made in the team. Two quotes for the new packaging line are on the table. Both are good, one a shade more expensive and noticeably more robust. Exactly the case we built the whole structure for. Beside me lies the stack I went through again yesterday evening: the decision matrix, the role cards, the sequence for today, minute by minute. I lean back deliberately, fold my hands in my lap and say: “This is your decision. I am only here today.”

It goes quiet. Tobias, who has known the packaging side for eight years, leafs through the figures. He talks knowledgeably for five minutes about breakage rates and service life, and I hear how good he is at this. Then he looks up, straight at me, and asks: “And what do you think, Katrin? Which one would you take?”

There it is, the moment.

It is on the tip of my tongue. I could say in one sentence which one I would take, and everyone in the room is waiting for exactly that. I can feel how pleasant it would be, for them and for me. For a second I want to do it. Instead I say: “You have everything you need. Decide.”

They decide. They take the cheaper one. And in the moment the hands go up, I know what has happened here. They did not weigh up which quote was the better one. They guessed which one I quietly preferred, and then carefully took the other. The structure worked. The decision is still not their own.

In the weeks that follow I do what I do best. I add more method. I sharpen the roles, I define which decision sits with the team above which value, I build a template for the trade-off so that nobody has to glance upwards any more. And still the same thing happens every time. The group discusses intelligently, gets a long way, and at the end one head turns towards me. Once it is about a framework contract, once about a complaint case, and every time the gaze falls on me at the end, as if the structure were only a polite prelude and the last word always mine. The plan is perfect. It simply does not take hold.

One evening I sit alone in the room with Tobias, the others have gone. I ask him without preamble: “Why do you always ask me in the end?” He thinks for a long time. Then he says quietly: “Because for twenty years the rule here has been: in the end the boss decides. And whoever makes a decision and gets it wrong stands there alone. We have all seen that happen.”

That is when I understand that I have been working at the wrong end the whole time. No template in the world beats a sentence that everyone here absorbed on their first day at work. In the end the boss decides. That is the unwritten rule, and beneath it sits a fear that is justified.

At the next meeting I leave the plan in the folder. I stand at the front and say: “I think we have a rule here that appears in no roadmap. In the end the boss decides. And whoever decides and gets it wrong stands there alone. Is that right?” A few nod straight away. One says: “That’s how it has always been.” I say: “Then let’s talk about it. If you decide and it goes wrong, who stands there?” It goes quiet. “I do,” I say. “I stand next to you. A team decision is a decision of this department, even when it goes wrong. That applies from today, and you may hold me to it.”

For the first time something moves in the room that no method triggered. Tobias looks at me, and this time he does not ask which one I would take. He says: “Good. Then we’ll take the more robust one, for these three reasons.” And he lists them, one after another.

In the weeks that follow, the plan does not change. What changes is who speaks first and who stays silent at the end. Twice a decision is made entirely without me, and once it goes wrong. I stand in front of it, as I said I would, and nobody stands there alone. The third time, I notice that no one turns their head towards me any more.

In the end it is not the cleanest structure that counts. What counts is the sentence nobody writes down and everybody follows anyway. Change is decided below the surface, at the unwritten rules and at the fear that lies beneath them.