The Institute Of Directors on Pall Mall is a bastion of British conservatism, as a friend of mine discovered to his cost.

Martin, a film producer, had arranged to meet with a potential investor at the institute, and arrived in his normal attire of  jacket, shirt, jeans and cowboy boots. He was met at the entrance by a doorman dressed in smart black suit, freshly polished shoes and tie.

“Can I help you sir?” he asked.

Martin explained the purpose of his visit. The doorman looked him up and down with palpable disdain.

“Well I’m afraid you can’t come in dressed like that sir. I’ll page your colleague and he can perhaps meet you here.”

The doorman picked up a phone and after a couple of minutes delay, during which Martin was left standing like a naughty schoolboy, the potential investor was located and came to the phone.

“Hello sir,  I have a Mr Carr to meet you in the lobby.”  said the doorman.

There was a pause.

“Unfortunately not sir, I’m not able to send him up as the gentleman appears to have arrived dressed for a rodeo!”

I laughed at the time, but I wasn’t laughing on Easter Monday, when I suffered a similar public humiliation – but at a football match of all things.

I wanted to go to the Rotherham v Port Vale match, but Easter is ‘family time’ and the only way I could persuade the family to join me was to promise them a seat away from the pie munching, swearing and farting masses in what Roy Keane famously referred to as the ‘prawn sandwiches’ – corporate hospitality.

Now I’m not without social etiquette – I realised that my normal matchday attire, which can best be described as charity shop chic – wasn’t going to do. And so I opted for my alternative middle-aged-man-making-a-bit-of-an-effort look of tailored jacket, business shirt, smart jeans and brogues.

I first realised this wasn’t good enough when  the bloke on the door…dressed in the same black suit, tie and freshly shined shoes as the doorman from the Institute Of Directors, looked me up and down and took me to one side, away from the queue.

“It’s fine for today sir, but for future reference, we have a strict dress code and don’t allow jeans.”

I apologised and thought that was the end of the matter. It wasn’t.  I’d seen the doorman go over to the reception desk and nod in my direction. When I got there, I found out why.

“Is yours the party where someone is wearing jeans?” asked  the lady behind the desk.

From her tone, she may easily have substituted “ is wearing jeans” with “has got dog shit on their shoes.” I admitted that it was, I was the guilty party and that I had already received a telling off.

“Well here’s a letter for you to take away as well” she said.

And indeed there was a letter…the football fans equivalent of a yellow card. One more transgression and I’d be off.

I thought my daughter was going to wet herself laughing, which would have been embarrassing in itself. First her dad had been told off and then he’d been given a letter to take home. She couldn’t resist pointing out that nobody at school had ever thought her behaviour sufficiently unacceptable to send her home with a letter.

It was my own fault of course – I should have read the terms and conditions properly when I booked. It clearly specified that trousers and not jeans, were to be worn. But as we climbed the stairs and entered  the executive suite, I had cause to wonder about the purpose and effectiveness of the rule.

‘Trousers’ is a term that covers a multitude of sins, and almost everyone in the room seemed to have looked at the dress code and thought, “What is the most unstylish raggy-arsed outfit I can wear which still complies with the letter of the code?” Most of the people in there must have known each other – not from previous matches, but from an encounter at the crimplene bargain rail in Marks & Spencer some time around the turn of the century. Even my daughter, who considers me to be one small step up from a tramp, and never misses an opportunity to remind me of the fact, had to concede that I was better dressed than 80% of the people in there.   And yet I was the one with a letter folded sheepishly in the pocket of  my offending jeans.

Rules are tiresome things aren’t they?  They’re tiresome for those creating them and they’re tiresome for those who are expected to comply with them. And it seems like human nature that where there’s a rule,  people will try to find a way around it.

I don’t believe the  football club want to stop people wearing jeans. What they do want,  is for people who use their corporate suite facilities to dress  smartly, and they see the ‘no jeans’ policy as the best way of achieving this. But it clearly doesn’t work. Someone wearing jacket, jeans and good shoes will always look smarter than someone wearing old baggy trousers, ill-fitting shirt and battered loafers. The ‘no jeans’ rule is a proxy for something else, and that something else doesn’t quite equate.

I think there’s a lesson here for any business or enterprise. Put rules in place and they will often have unintended consequences. Some customers will bend the rules in ways you can’t anticipate in advance. Other customers will fall foul of the rules, despite their behaviour not being your intended target. And some prospects will elect  not to deal with you at all, simply because they don’t like your rules.

I’m not suggesting that you have no rules at all…that would never work…but rather that you give careful thought to the overall effect of any rules you do implement, and any likely unintended consequences. Err on the side of having less rules, rather than more, and make sure that any rules you do have are not a false proxy for what you’re trying to achieve.   All other things being equal, the less rules you have the better. Your organisation or enterprise appears all the more customer-friendly, the less rules it has.

So if you have rules and regulations which serve no purpose at all, fail to fulfil the original purpose for which they were intended, or simply appear to tick customers off without making anything better, get rid of them!

Aside from my sartorial faux pax, the corporate hospitality made a pleasant change, which I’ll probably repeat next season. So if you have any idea where I might purchase a pair of trousers that wouldn’t have looked out of place during the Hungarian uprising, and a soup-stained darts players shirt, I’d be very grateful. I want to fit in next time.

Thank you.

John – ‘Yellow Card’- Harrison

P.S  I recently heard Freddie Flintoff  describe the aforementioned Roy Keane  as always looking like he’s trying to find the bloke who crapped in his shoes. Funny and very close to the truth.