Every business already has rules. The only question is whether they are written down or learned the hard way, by being told off for something nobody had mentioned. The Rules of the Game is a single page that states three things plainly: what a person may decide alone, what they must check first, and what never happens under any circumstances.
Unwritten rules are expensive in a specific way. They make the owner the permission department. They produce inconsistency, because the answer depends on who asks and what kind of day it is. And they punish good people for guessing wrong, which teaches everybody that the safest move is to check first, always, about everything.
What the model is
Three zones, and all three get written down.
Inside the lines. Decide it, act, tell me afterwards. Spending under a stated figure. Refunding up to a month's fee. Moving your own diary. Fixing a complaint on the spot.
On the line. Check first, every time, no exceptions. Spending between two stated figures. Any discount above a set percentage. Anything that changes a contract or a price.
Over the line. Never, whoever asks, including the owner. Promising a date the delivery team has not agreed. Hiring without you. Anything you would not want a client to read.
The green zone is the important one, and it is the one that gets left out. Most businesses have a long list of things you must not do and no list at all of the things people are free to decide. That is precisely why they check everything.
What this is not
It is not a staff handbook. Handbooks are written for tribunals and read by nobody. It is not a set of values on the wall either — integrity and excellence do not tell anyone whether they can authorise a four-hundred-pound refund on a Friday afternoon.
It is a short, specific statement of decision rights and non-negotiables, with numbers in it. Money limits. Who can promise what to a client. What happens when something goes wrong. What ends a conversation regardless of who is asking.
Why it matters to an owner
Because most bottlenecks in a small business are permission bottlenecks, not capacity bottlenecks. The work is not waiting on skill or hours. It is waiting on an answer from one person who is in a meeting.
Because inconsistency destroys authority faster than strictness ever does. If the same request gets three different answers depending on the week, people stop making decisions altogether and start managing you instead of managing the work.
And because you cannot take a proper holiday without this. A business where nobody knows their own limits is a business that phones you on the beach — and it is worth less to a buyer for exactly the same reason.
What the cost looks like in hours
An illustration with round numbers, not a client. Take a fourteen-person business where the owner signs off effectively everything, and log the permission questions for a week. Say the count comes to twenty-two.
The owner's own cost is modest: twenty-two questions at six minutes each is a little over two hours. That is not the expensive part. If each question holds up a piece of work for an average of four hours while it waits for an answer, that is roughly eighty-eight hours a week of stalled work sitting inside the business, and none of it appears on any report you produce.
Write the rules and most of that goes. Spend under £250, no approval needed. Between £250 and £2,000, the team leader. Above that, the owner. Refunds up to one month's fee at the account handler's discretion. Any discount above 5 per cent comes to you. Nothing is promised to a client unless it is in writing. Run the log again a month later and most of what was being asked has disappeared, because most of it was money under £250 and permission to do the obvious. Nothing was hired and nothing was bought. Somebody simply wrote down what people were allowed to do.
What belongs on the page
Money
What can be spent, by whom, up to what figure, and what happens above it. Numbers, not adjectives. Two hundred and fifty pounds is a rule; reasonable amounts is not.
Client promises
Who can commit to a date, a price or a piece of scope, and in what form. This is where most of the damage happens in a small business, and it is almost always caused by somebody being helpful.
People
Who can hire, who can agree hours or leave, and who has the conversation when something goes wrong. If the answer to all three is you, say so deliberately and put a date on changing it.
Quality
What gets checked before it leaves the building, and by whom. If nothing is checked, decide that on purpose rather than by accident.
Information
What is confidential, what has to be recorded in the system, and what never goes in an email.
The hard nos
The short list of things that end the conversation regardless of who is asking or how good the reason sounds. Keep it short. A long list of nos is just a handbook with attitude.
How to use it this week
Log every permission question for five days
Who asked, what about, how long it waited. Do not fix anything yet. The log is the argument.
Sort the log into three piles
They could have decided this. They should check. This must never happen. Most owners are surprised by the size of the first pile.
Put numbers on the money rules
Vague authority is no authority at all. If a figure is missing, people will assume the limit is zero and ask you.
Write one page and hand it out
One page. If it runs to four, you are writing a handbook and it will not be read.
Decide what happens when a rule is broken
A rule with no consequence is a suggestion, and everybody works out which is which within about a fortnight.
Review it quarterly and widen the top band
The goal is that the green zone grows every quarter. If it never grows, you are not delegating, you are documenting your own bottleneck.
Questions to ask yourself
- Out of ten, how clearly could each of your people state what they are allowed to decide without asking?
- How many questions reached you last week that somebody else could have answered?
- Which of your rules exist only in your head, and how would anyone else know them?
- Which rule do you break yourself, and what is that teaching the team?
- If you were away for three weeks with no phone, what would stop — and is that a capacity problem or a permission problem?
The takeaway. Write the rules when nothing has gone wrong. Rules created as punishment arrive attached to a bad mood and teach the team that the safest thing is to do nothing new. And exempt nobody, least of all yourself: an owner who sets a spending limit and then buys on a whim has not weakened one rule, they have cancelled the whole page. The test of a good page is how much freedom it gives, not how much control it keeps.
Where this connects
This is foundational to Leadership Coaching, because accountability is not a personality trait you hire for — it is what happens when people know exactly what is theirs to decide and exactly where the edges are. Read it alongside Situational Flex, which is about how much direction a person needs on a given task, and The 7 Habits, where defining the outcome comes before anybody can be asked to own it.
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Frequently asked questions
How is this different from a staff handbook or a set of company values?
A handbook is written for a tribunal and read by nobody, and values on a wall do not tell anyone whether they can authorise a four-hundred-pound refund on a Friday afternoon. The Rules of the Game is one page of decision rights with actual numbers in it: what can be spent and by whom, who can promise a client a date, what happens when something goes wrong, and the short list of things that end the conversation regardless of who is asking. It is designed to be used in the moment somebody would otherwise have interrupted you, which is why length is the enemy of it.
Won't writing rules down make my business feel bureaucratic?
It has the opposite effect when you write all three zones rather than one. Most businesses already have an unwritten list of things you must not do and no list at all of what people are free to decide, so everybody checks everything and the owner becomes the permission department. Naming the decisions somebody can make alone removes far more friction than the boundaries add. Judge the page by how much freedom it grants: if almost every decision sits in the check-first band, you have written a description of your own bottleneck and called it governance.
What if someone uses their new authority badly?
Set the limits where a mistake is survivable, then treat the first mistake as information about the rule rather than about the person. If somebody refunds a month's fee and it was the wrong call, the useful question is whether the figure is set too high or the guidance around it is too thin. Rules also need a stated consequence when they are broken, because a rule with no consequence is a suggestion and everybody works out which is which within a fortnight. Review the page quarterly, and widen the top band each time rather than tightening it by reflex.