# ⇄ The absence of a rule is a ban
Being the reference · system · https://build-here.africa/book/chapters/10-10-the-absence-of-a-rule-is-a-ban.html

## What you are asking for

You want your team to share its experience: lessons learned, methods, solved cases. Nothing is written down about what can go out.

## What the system hears

> "When in doubt, I publish nothing."

## What that produces

With no written rule, everyone guesses. And when people guess what can leave the company, they guess cautious: nothing. The absence of a rule works as a ban.

One page is enough. What gets shared by default: methods, lessons learned, cases without customer data, internal tools that are not confidential. What never goes out: personal data, customer information, non-public financial figures, what a contract forbids. Who answers when in doubt, and how fast.

A team wants to explain an improvement to the service. With the rule, it knows in five minutes what it can publish: the mechanism and the result, without naming the customer. Without the rule, the question goes up, waits, and the text never gets published.

Lead by example. Publish one of the team's lessons learned yourself, crediting the people who built it.

## The decision

→ Write the sharing rule on one page, this week.

→ Name who answers doubts, and commit to a response time.

→ Have the page read by customer relations, for the commitments made, and by engineering, for the technical details that stay in.

→ After three months, look at what got published and ask what blocked the rest.

## To discuss

Does everyone know what they can publish without asking?