{"id":110560,"date":"2009-12-16T10:56:00","date_gmt":"2009-12-16T15:56:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/37signals.com\/svn\/posts\/2060-control-in-its-wider-sense"},"modified":"2009-12-16T10:56:00","modified_gmt":"2009-12-16T15:56:00","slug":"control-in-its-wider-sense","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/110560","title":{"rendered":"Control in its wider sense"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A lot of companies seek to control employees. They have handbooks and policies. They monitor emails. They make rules about what&#8217;s allowed and what&#8217;s forbidden.<\/p>\n<p>But &#8220;control&#8221; is a tricky thing. The tighter the reins, the more you create an environment of distrust. An us vs. them mentality takes hold. And that&#8217;s when people start trying to game the system.<\/p>\n<p>That&#8217;s why workplace managers who seek &#8220;control&#8221; might want to consider the advice Shunryu Suzuki gives in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Zen-Mind-Beginners-Shunryu-Suzuki\/dp\/0834800799\">Zen Mind, Beginner\u2019s Mind<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p>The best way to control people is to encourage them to be mischievous. Then they will be in control in its wider sense. To give your sheep or cow a large, spacious meadow is the way to control him. So it is with people: first let them do what they want, and watch them. This is the best policy. To ignore them is not good; that is the worst policy. The second worst is trying to control them. The best one is to watch them, just to watch them, without trying to control them.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Imagine an employee handbook that just said: &#8220;We trust you. Be mischievous.&#8221;<\/p>\n<div class=\"feedflare\">\n<a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/37signals\/beMH?a=n23nkhauoxA:I7j4BstfUg0:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/37signals\/beMH?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/37signals\/beMH?a=n23nkhauoxA:I7j4BstfUg0:7Q72WNTAKBA\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/37signals\/beMH?d=7Q72WNTAKBA\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A lot of companies seek to control employees. They have handbooks and policies. They monitor emails. They make rules about what&#8217;s allowed and what&#8217;s forbidden. But &#8220;control&#8221; is a tricky thing. The tighter the reins, the more you create an environment of distrust. An us vs. them mentality takes hold. And that&#8217;s when people start [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7020,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-110560","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110560","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7020"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=110560"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110560\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=110560"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=110560"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=110560"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}