"Policy is what happens."

David Maister passes along a couple of profound rules:

After a speech I gave, Francis Sheridan, whose title is Resource Efficiency Manager at 3 CES/CEOEE, sent in this comment:

“About ten years ago, while still a manager for Washington State, I took a week's class from a person considered, at the time, maybe the most talented and accomplished person in Washington State government, Dick Thomas. He'd been Chief of Staff for the Governor, house majority leader, president of Evergreen State College, etc., and a very cool guy to boot.

When I took that class, he said two things over and over until I, for one, wanted to kill him—-figuratively, of course. Long after the class ended I finally began to understand the wisdom of these two simple thoughts:
1. Policy is what happens.
2. Peoples' feelings about the process largely determine their feelings about the outcome of the process.”