en Passant

I have recently been forced to defend myself against a vague policy. This policy while nothing more than a dress-code at my daughter's daycare, got me thinking about the importance of putting things down in writing. It reminds me of a line from something I read once, "If it is not put down in writing, it does not exist." You can apply this with virtually anything, be it from corporate policies, dress-codes or people. I write, therefore I do.

A former co-worker pointed out to me the importance of defining strict policies. According to him, it is the responsibility of the owner to completely document, define and restrict the usage of their product. In many instances, fault falls on the owner if a policy is badly enforced or not defined at all. Take email for instance, without a strictly defined usage policy, an IT administrator is opening themselves up to numerous technical issues (like infinite sized mailbox, spam floods, abuse and more), plus legal issues, like HIPAA, and SOX compliance or email retention and archiving. It is impossible to use technical means to restrict all these behaviors, therefore any decent policy must include some ethical requirements (you will not send out porn/spam/profanity to our clients) and consequences for violating the policies.

With regards to the dress-code, the school administrators found they did not have a leg to stand on. They had not defined a girl's acceptable attire sufficiently, and we took advantage of that loophole. By not putting their full requirements into writing and simply relying on word-of-mouth, they hoped to enforce a policy that officially did not exist. I imagine that the principal will be revisiting their dress-code policy for the coming school year and dresses without collars will excluded.