There are no rules that fit all situations. (Check the Ten Commandments if you don’t believe this.) Our businesses and our lives are far too complex for any guidelines to be 100 percent appropriate in all cases. This is not meant as an inducement to break very basic rules, such as your core values. It means that when your beloved rule comes smack up against holding back progress, you should at least be willing to question whether the rule is still appropriate, or whether it’s some kind of holdover.

You will not be struck down if you break the rules. (You may be fired, or you might lose market share.) But it is worthwhile to weigh the risk of breaking a rule against the potential payoff.  And definitely don’t worry about “getting in trouble” if you’re sure that your rule breaking will help deliver the goods. (See the discussion of permission.)

And you don’t have to be “the best” to make up your own rules, although it does help. A certain amount of experience and insight is attributed to those who are “the best,” and if you are considered “the best,” it gives you a great deal of credibility and insulates you from backlash.  And, of course, making up your own rules may help you to be the best.

Rule breakers are not lawbreakers. (Not necessarily, anyway.) Know the difference. If you find that breaking the rules will in fact break the law, and you still plan to break that rules,  make sure you are doing it for a very good reason. Almost all of the time–unless you are deliberately setting an example or fighting for social change–it would be better to find another way.

Break rules when your new approach will make you more effective, or when the old rule is simply not effective at all. Otherwise, why are you breaking the rule?

Leaders are typically more comfortable with breaking rules than other people, that’s probably a big chunk of what makes them leaders. If you have people working for you, encourage them to question rules that aren’t your (business’s) goals. This could help turn them into leaders all by itself.

Knowledge doesn’t make something right. There’s an old saw that if you don’t know that there is a rule, you don’t know enough to break it. This is nonsense and has nothing to do with rule breaking. Understand the situation you are in. Figure out why things aren’t working and base your next actions on what will work. Of course it helps to understand the current environment, and you may try to avoid wanton rule breaking just for its own sake. But in the end, if there’s a rule in place and you inadvertently break it, see the next rule.

“It is easier to apologize later than to ask for permission,” said Admiral Grace Hopper, the inventor of COBOL. This woman broke so many rules it would make your head spin. If you ask for permission first, are refused and do it anyway, you’re really in trouble. So it’s better not to ask. If you’re certain that you’re right, go ahead and do it. You’ll find out more about the penalties later anyway.

The rules for who should and should not break the rules are as follows: novices do not know the rules; amateurs know the rules, but have trouble following them; pros know the rules and can begin to bend them as necessary; and geniuses, who know the rules, break them, create new rules, and break those as well. Each of these people can break the rules as necessary. Even novices are allowed to break the rules, as they may have radically effective propositions based on their innocence. –Anonymous

Creativity does not have to result in rule breaking. There are all sorts of ways to improve your results inside of the current rules, especially when those rules “make sense” and are working well. But most of the time, creativity does result in rule stretching.

And just because you break the rules doesn’t mean you’re a genius or even an innovator. Rule breaking may produce no valuable results whatsoever. On the other hand, breakthroughs never happen without rule breaking. It’s part of the definition.