There are still parts of Greece that don’t have too many rules to abide by. It’s one of the reasons I love the place. Whatever safety rules or compliance regulations we think should be in place, well, they just don’t enforce them as much as where I live, Australia. So it’s common to see a set of stairs with no handrail, use a toilet in a nice bar or taverna with no toilet seat, and watch a family hand-washing dishes in a busy taverna with no sink in sight.
Nobody apologised for it. Nobody seemed to need to.
Then I came home to Australia, a country that runs, understandably, on safety and compliance. We follow rules. We comply, or we get fined. It’s not wrong. But it got me thinking about what rules actually do to us as service leaders and to the people we lead.
Here’s the tell: have you ever asked for something reasonable and been told, flatly, “No, can’t do it; it’s policy”? Compare that to someone saying, “Let me see what I can do within the guidelines.” Same rulebook. Completely different human being on the other side of it.
That difference is everything.
The Stoics had a name for this. Epictetus taught what’s now called the dichotomy of control… Peace comes from knowing precisely what is yours to hold and releasing the rest without guilt. It’s not about ignoring the rules. It’s about knowing exactly which ones are actually yours to hold firm on and which ones are within your discretion to flex.
In Service Habits, I call these red rules and blue rules. Red rules protect people: safety, legality, and non-negotiability. Blue rules exist to make things run smoothly, and they can be bent when the situation calls for it. The problem is most frontline teams have never been told the difference. So everything gets treated like a red rule, “policy” becomes the shield, and the human being disappears behind it.
It’s the single most debated habit when I teach Service Habits to leadership cohorts. Because underneath the debate is a real question: do we trust our people to think, or do we just need them to comply?
Rules exist to serve people, not enslave them. When a leader can’t tell the difference or hasn’t given their team permission to tell the difference, service becomes rigid, and so does the culture around it.
Next time you catch yourself, or your team, reaching for “it’s policy,” ask the Stoic question first: is this actually mine to hold firm on? Or is it mine to flex?
That’s where service and leadership begin.
If your team is hiding behind “it’s policy,” it may be time to reset what good service looks like. Learn more about ServiceQ’ s Service Habits program, and how we help leaders build teams that know when to hold firm, when to flex, and how to stay human in the moments that matter.
Learn more about Service Habits here https://serviceq.co/programs/embedding-service-habits/