Often we notice barriers to effective delivery of services. These can be presented as “unchangeable”, with work arounds put in place, or new innovations stifled. The red rules blue rules tool helps you to look at these systematically and be able to logically challenge and remove or adapt those rules which are creating the barriers.

The tool helps you to:

• understand the impact of governance around current ways of working
• understand limits and opportunities for change
• understand actions and energy required to effect change

The ‘Red and Blue Rules Tool’ is a way of approaching change differently. It aims to help identify how to understand the rules which underpin our way of working. It breaks our approaches, models, and practice into two broad categories:

Red Rules: Fixed constraints (e.g. laws, safety regulations)

We are all familiar with red lines, a limit beyond which we cannot go, often articulated as ‘This is my red line’. In health and care, people, teams and systems all have red lines that limit the change which is possible. It is useful, therefore, to think about these as red rules, rules we cannot change, such as laws.

Blue Rules: Flexible practices (e.g. habits, routines)

What we do as health and care professionals often emerges out of routine and habit, rather than from policy or rules. We call these self-imposed rules, blue rules, rules that are simply how we currently do things, i.e. custom and practice.

How it shapes our thinking:

Once we start to break down why we do things the way we do, we can understand our system differently. Understanding what a red rule (fixed) and a blue rule (fluid) is means we can judge what can and can’t be changed. This way of understanding our system gives us the insight required to make effective change.

Resources:

1) Read more - Introduction to Red/Blue Rules
2) Guidance document - this gives more detail on the concept of red and blue rules and has a step-by-step guide to running a session to explore a topic using red and blue rules.
3) A presentation to run a workshop on red and blue rules (including presenter notes for key slides)
4) An agenda for the session, along with facilitator notes
5) A copy of the Red/Blue rules spectrum
6) A handout for workshop attendees to record their rule that they would want to change, and what they would require to do to change it