When it comes to work — and sometimes life — some people like the certainty of rules, while others prefer the freedom of principles and working it out for themselves. Inevitably we don't always get what we want.
It occurred to me that it would be useful to be able to identify easily the difference between situations that offer the risk of frustration versus those that just offer risk, and how to identify the best case to be aiming for.
Experience suggests this matrix is a pretty good approximation of reality. What it doesn't answer is how to approach situations where there is considerable divergence in capability within the group. Perhaps that is the question we could have been answering when we were trying to find a 'better way of doing things'.
