# Business policy: you have one even if you never wrote it [Home](https://theonlyaxelj.com/en) › [Study](https://theonlyaxelj.com/en/study) › [Articles](https://theonlyaxelj.com/en/study/articles) author: [Axel Jedlitschka](https://theonlyaxelj.com/en/about) published: 2026-10-08 updated: 2026-10-08 language: en reading time: 5 min topic: Organization source booklet: [From Goal to Target](https://theonlyaxelj.com/en/shop/introduction/goals-targets) There is no such thing as a business with no policy. There is the policy you chose, and the policy circumstances wrote for you. Every business runs on policy, including one that has never written a word of it. Where nothing is written, a random policy takes shape, and the only real question is who wrote it: you, or the circumstances. ## What policy is, and what it isn't **Policy** is a guiding principle for the long run, one that doesn't change from one decision to the next. It is the rule you decide by when a case turns up that you haven't seen before. It isn't a procedure, and it isn't an order. An order is an instruction, spoken or written, to carry out a single step. Policy sits behind those instructions and points them in a direction. In a garage, for example, the rule that no vehicle leaves without a brake check is policy. Asking someone to check the brakes on one particular car that came in this morning is an order. The difference matters because one policy saves a great many orders. Someone who knows the rule doesn't have to come and ask you every single time. Suppose a salon owner writes down exactly one rule: no discount that isn't already in the price list. From then on she stops arguing about price several times a week. She hasn't become tougher. There is simply no decision left to make in each conversation. ## There is no such thing as no policy This is the finding that turns the subject from interesting into urgent. According to the source, a business with no policy at all ends up with a random one. And a policy that exists but that nobody knows about leads to the same place: everyone decides for themselves. So when an owner says the business has no policy, that isn't describing a real state of affairs. There are only two options: conscious policy, or accidental policy. Accidental policy is simply a policy you didn't choose. Suppose a design studio has two employees and no written rule on pricing. Each of them quotes a different price for the same job. Clients compare notes and complain. Neither employee did anything wrong. Each of them just made up a policy of her own, because nobody gave her one. There is a quieter version too. In another business the policy does exist, but only inside the owner's head. The staff guess at it, each a little differently, and the outcome is exactly what you would get with no policy at all. Random policy doesn't only form among employees. It forms in you as well, out of something that once happened. Suppose a designer raised her prices once and lost a client. For years after, she never raised a price again. Nobody decided that in a meeting. One event became a whole policy, and that policy runs her business even though she never wrote it. ## Why an employee breaks a rule There is another reason policy doesn't hold, and it has to do with what sits above it. The source arranges these things on a ladder, and purpose sits directly above policy. **Purpose** here means the narrower aim that belongs to one particular activity. According to the source, someone who sets random or contrary rules for themselves isn't necessarily being difficult. They are simply working toward a different purpose from the group's. Suppose an employee keeps giving discounts against the price list. The owner is sure it is a discipline problem. A conversation shows the employee believed the purpose was never to lose a customer. A different purpose led to a different policy. That is why, when the same rule is broken again and again, the usual cause is that nobody ever passed on the purpose above it. It is rarely a sign that the people below it are stubborn. ## The policy that decides what you deliver The last connection is about the product. According to the source, what a business finally hands over has to be looked at carefully, settled and released as policy. In plain terms, deciding what exactly the customer gets from you isn't an everyday decision. As long as it hasn't been settled, each employee delivers a slightly different version, and from the outside that looks like a quality problem. Since it doesn't look like a policy problem, people search for the fix in the wrong place. Suppose a clinic sets as policy what a treatment includes: how long it lasts, what is handed over at the end and what gets recorded. The therapists start delivering the same thing. In the opposite case, an owner complains about inconsistency between staff, but never settled what the product is. Each person defined it for himself. ## What the booklet has on this In the goals and targets booklet, this chapter closes with two exercises: spot it, and build it. Before it come the ladder as a whole and the difference between goal, purpose and ideal scene. After it comes the bridge from the existing scene to the one you want. The policy in your business is already written. The only question is who was holding the pen. - [From Goal to Target](https://theonlyaxelj.com/en/shop/introduction/goals-targets): One ladder for your business, from a single goal down to three actions for the coming week. --- [עברית](https://theonlyaxelj.com/he/study/articles/the-policy-you-never-wrote) · [Español](https://theonlyaxelj.com/es/study/articles/the-policy-you-never-wrote)