Red Behavior (Rule-Breaking Heuristic)

“Why Does Everything Take So Long? Can’t You Speed Things Up a Bit?”

Well, what can you say? A person willing to step outside any regulatory framework to get ahead is nothing if not impatient. When the usual official channels take too long, a Red will scale over a few levels of decision makers and expeditiously look for the person who really calls the shots.

The first example that comes to mind was the traffic in my beautiful capital city. Sure, many locals are in more of a hurry than the national average when they sit behind the wheel—there are statistics about this. But since we’re talking about Red behavior, I’d like to tell you about a colleague I had a few years ago. Björn and I used a car as our principal means of transport in and around the city. It simply took too long to use public transport. Björn lost his license every so often because of his somewhat liberal approach to speed limits.

He lived far outside the city, and the journey into the office, about twenty miles away, could take about forty minutes. That was on a good day; it could just as easily take an hour and a half.

Björn rarely felt the need to adjust his driving according to the flow of traffic. His opinion was that there was no reason for him to follow every single traffic rule. The posted speed limits here and there—fifty, sixty, and so on—they were mostly recommendations. They didn’t apply to him. They were there for people who didn’t really know how to drive a car!

On one occasion I was sitting in the office with a few colleagues having a cup of coffee, discussing the rather serious traffic situation. It felt as if the city was on the verge of a traffic infarction. Björn didn’t know what we were talking about. He wasn’t aware of the problem at all. On the contrary, he felt that the traffic hadn’t been bad lately. When we questioned him a bit more, it turned out that he usually drove in the bus lane. All the way. For over twenty miles. It was so much quicker that way. Björn even maintained that this was okay. You could even get a permit for the bus lane. That’s what he did, and it cost him about $140 a month.

About every four weeks the police stopped him, but it was worth it. Just imagine how much time he saved! And all it cost him was the fines. He felt it was a good deal.

This story illustrates quite clearly how Red behavior works. They know just as well as everyone else that it’s wrong to break the rules; however, since it’s quicker that way, they do it anyway. Reds are notorious rule breakers. Once again, I would like to remind you of their intentions—to get the job done.

Reds have no problem taking one or two shortcuts, as long as it’s about getting things done. With such a generous approach to regulations and rules, you’ll definitely arrive faster. I would even say that a Red is often so fast that if something were to go wrong he would still manage to redo the project. At the same time, no one else ever really knows what’s going to happen.