124 Leading with NLP
repealed, being amended, elaborated and supplemented
until the statute book groans under their weight. Roman law
organizations and Roman law countries (the distinction ap-
plies all the way up to nations) have a huge body of laws that
is being added to constantly. (For example, the French
Napoleonic Code never deleted a law, only added new ones.
The legacy of Roman law still affects France, which has more
laws per capita than any other nation.)
Leadership is a risk in any culture, because leaders by de-
finition move away from the status quo, but hardest in
cultures under Roman law. Roman law encourages adminis-
trators to enforce the laws. Leaders thrive in conditions of
ambiguity and uncertainty, and Roman law cultures and or-
ganizations do not tolerate these conditions gladly. A Roman
law organization will be more oriented towards discovering
errors than exploring possibilities. It will also be more
turned towards the past than the future.
Common law is based more on practice and precedents: a
living code, modified in the present in order to cope better
with the future. Because it permits what it does not forbid, it
is influenced by feedback in a way that Roman law is not.
Common law can close loopholes when it becomes clear that
a practice hurts the community; that still leaves large areas of
freedom. Innovations are not against the rules, so people
can experiment without fear. Roman law forbids what it does
not permit, so innovations are against the rules and may be
stopped immediately before any benefit becomes apparent.
They have to be justified before they can be approved. It is
much easier to see and fix what is wrong than justify some-
thing as right. So Roman law tends to add ever more
restrictions and relax very few.
A good example of Roman law in action was England in
the 1970s when trade unions would ‘work to rule’ as a bar-
gaining counter for more wages or better conditions.
Historically, trade unions arose in the face of management
repression to represent working people’s rights against the
owners and managers of companies. Originally, owners had
great power over their employees, wages were poor, condi-