Standing Orders

What the lamps mean

1. Earning its place. Someone can say what the rule prevents, that thing can still happen, and the rule has done its job at least once. Keep it. If it has been quiet for years, the page says so without calling that a verdict: some rules are quiet because they work.
2. Purpose forgotten. Nobody can say what the rule is for. A rule like this is usually loyalty to a person or a bad week that nobody remembers. It costs something every time it is followed and prevents nothing anyone can name. Ask the room before you keep it or drop it; sometimes the one person who knows is on vacation.
3. Retired on paper. The rule was for a harm that cannot happen anymore: the supplier has a portal now, the old machine is gone, the person it was written about left. The rule is still followed because nobody wrote the retirement down. Write it down.
4. Never tested. The rule is for something real that can still happen, and it has never once done its job. Either you have been lucky, or the rule would not catch the thing if it came. Break something on purpose, small and on a Tuesday, and see whether the rule notices.

Four questions to ask about any rule

1. Who wrote it, and from what? A rule written from one bad day has that day as its author. The day may have been unusual.
2. Does it prevent a harm, or manage a discomfort? Both are real. Only one of them is worth a standing order.
3. Who pays for it? A rule is usually written by the person it protects and paid for by someone else, every time it is followed. Ask that person. If the rule stops a twenty-dollar loss by handing someone a hundred-dollar problem, you have not stopped a loss, you have moved it.
4. When did it last come back "no"? A rule that has never stopped anything is a sentence, not a guard. The date is the evidence; the feeling of being careful is not.

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