Rules serve a purpose. They provide guidance for all sorts of activities including how we manage our business, the level of service we provide, our responsibilities to the environment and how we treat fellow employees.

Company rules that exist to comply with Federal, State and local law obviously can't be broken by anyone in the organization. For example, CEOs can't discriminate in their hiring practices or authorize dumping of toxic materials.

Rules that are tied to how we operate however provide more leeway. These are often referred to as SOPs - standard operating procedures - and were established because they were thought to be the most effective procedures.

Strong leaders however realize that there is always 'a better mousetrap' and encourage and empower employees to be creative. That's because achieving performance goals is far more important than adhering to operating SOPs.

In fact, employees that 'Break the Rules', and by so doing consistently meet their goals, often provide insight into new processes that often become the basis of new SOPs.

No. 'Break the Rules' is really just another way of saying you need to constantly look at the effectiveness of your paradigms - those established processes in your organization that govern how things are done.

When paradigms become established they are usually the best processes for a specific circumstance and a specific time. When circumstances change, your paradigms should be reexamined.

For example, ten years ago very few terminal or driver managers were concerned about fuel consumption when Diesel was averaging $1/gallon. Today, fuel consumption and idling are key metrics at most trucking companies. Think about how the responsibilities of field managers have changed regarding controlling their drivers' fuel consumption.

Driver labor is another great example. Trucking companies have been on a process see-saw these last five years in terms of recruiting, hiring and retention. When driver labor was tight; our hiring restrictions were loose, wages were constantly on the rise and low productivity often went unchallenged. Today, only the best drivers are hired, low productivity drivers have been replaced, driver wage reductions have taken place at many carriers and layoffs are prevalent throughout the industry.

Trucking is a dynamic business and the 'rules' change often. There are several current major events pending that could greatly change tomorrow's rules and paradigms. Court decisions regarding owner-operator non-employee status is one example. Employee free choice legislation is another. Think about how different our processes will be if owner-operators were ruled to be employees and unions were validated without a secret ballot.