A few Fridays ago, I took my team to a bar for a mid-afternoon happy hour.
The place was empty—just the nine of us and two bartenders.
“Can we get a table for nine?” I asked.
“We don’t have a table for nine,” one of them said.
“Could we push a few tables together?”
“Sorry. It’s against the rules.”
“Fire code thing?” I asked.
“No. It’s just against the rules.”
Later, I circled back. “Why is that the rule?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve never asked.”
I didn’t take it as laziness or rudeness. I saw something my friend Christina Pan calls regression to the incentive—when people behave exactly as the system encourages them to. Nothing more. Nothing less.
If extra effort isn’t rewarded, it disappears.
If rules matter more than outcomes, rules win.
Over time, even good people stop thinking and just do what’s asked.
That bartender wasn’t paid to create happy customers. He was paid to follow the rules and make it to the end of his shift.
Most of us have done the same thing. Quietly. Logically. And, often, at someone else’s expense.
I’ve led companies that accidentally trained people to act like this. I’ve promoted the rule followers and overlooked the quiet fixers. I’ve watched healthy cultures drift into compliance because I didn’t notice fast enough.
Here’s what I’ve learned: Most people don’t want to be robots. They just need a system that trusts them to be human.
Here are four signs your culture might be turning people into robots—and how to reverse it.
1. Rules replace judgment
Phrases like:
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“We can’t do that.”
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“That’s not how it works.”
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“The system won’t let me.”
Sound familiar?
When policies replace thinking, both your customers and your best employees feel it.
What we tried: We gave the team a new lens. We started asking:
“What would you do if this were yours?”
If you owned this checkout line, this client call, this policy—what would you do?
We didn’t write a manual for the answers. Just asking the question made people pause, then act like owners.
What to ask your team:
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What rule gets in the way of serving our customers?
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What would you do instead?
2. People show up, but don’t lean in
We once had a support rep who quietly hit all her numbers. When I asked what she’d change about the job, she shrugged:
“That’s not my lane.”
She was doing exactly what we asked. But we hadn’t asked her to care.
What we tried: We added one question to our weekly check-ins:
“What did you do last week that made the company better?”
At first, the answers were purely tactical: “Answered 42 tickets.” “Got a package out on time.”
Over time, the answers got deeper:
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“That client stayed because I didn’t rush her.”
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“That fix reduced rework for the whole team.”
Some stayed task-doers. But others became stewards.
Ask yourself:
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Does everyone know how their role moves the business forward?
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Or do they just know the tasks?
3. Collective comfort trumps customer care
A few weeks ago, an employee at a travel company, Amy, went out to buy pants for a client who had spilled on herself.
No one told her to. No policy covered it. She just cared.
The client became a loyal customer and later brought her whole portfolio to the company.
Why Amy? Maybe because her bonus was tied to bookings. But more likely, she felt her effort mattered.
What we tried: A simple profit-sharing pool. No dashboards. One rule:
“When the team wins, everyone wins.”
The first payout—just a few hundred dollars each—changed the energy. Suddenly, team performance wasn’t abstract. It was personal.
We heard less of:
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“That’s not my job.”
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“It’s the rules.”
And more ownership.
4. No one asks “why” anymore
A silent red flag: fewer questions.
We once built a training manual so detailed that nobody deviated from it. That felt like success—until problems changed, and nobody adapted.
What we tried: We rewrote the manual around outcomes:
“Increase return customers by 30%.”
Then asked the team: “How would you do it?”
The first ideas weren’t perfect. One team tried discounts that cost us money. I lost sleep, but at least they were aiming at the right problem. We adjusted together.
When people ask “why,” they start thinking like owners.
A quiet audit
The robots are coming. But your edge still comes down to this: Better rules, or better humans?
It’s easy to say, “Give people more freedom.” It’s harder to trust they’ll use it well.
Sometimes, people will misuse it. You’ll have to reset.
But far more often, they’ll rise to meet it—because it’s dignifying.
If you want to start this week, try this:
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Ask your best person, “What’s one rule you’d change if you could?”
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Then ask, “What would you replace it with?”
You’ll learn a lot—about your systems and your level of trust.