A classic problem for any sizable organization is to decide where to standardize and where to allow autonomy.
At its core, all organizations must have some things they require of all members. Otherwise, is it really an organization?
While some standardization is necessary, many managers and leaders standardize just for the heck of it. Standardizing things feels productive, like cleaning up a messy room, and is a go-to move for leaders when they don’t know exactly what to do next. Whether it’s for power or preference, many people believe “the same” is “the best.” And it’s not.
Here we explore where to give your teams autonomy and where to require standards.
Standardize: People & Communication & Values
People
The number one thing you must standardize is who you let into your organization.
“You don’t understand I have a particular kind of person I want” No, you don’t understand. We will not budge on the type of people we let in, whether it’s defined by aptitude, experience, ambition or something else. That doesn’t mean that that definition doesn’t change over time, but it does mean that it doesn’t budge during application (i.e. it changes intentionally, not reactively).
Practically, standardizing on the people you let into your organization means being deeply involved in hiring. Organizational leaders should look at every single proposed hiring packet until it is completely unscalable (e.g. > 50 a week, more than you think). When it becomes unscalable, you should federate the responsibility to people you trust entirely to be stewards of the most important decision a company makes.
Holding this line won’t be easy. You will be tested when a willful leader tries to bend the rules. They’ll claim that they really know a person is good even if they interviewed poorly. Or maybe they’ll try to waive the interview entirely. Push back. This is not the place to make friends, this is not the place to make compromises that let people feel heard. If you run a department this is the most fundamental place in which you are being paid to uphold the bar.
If a leader regularly tries to bring in the wrong people, it’s a performance management issue with the leader and needs to be treated as such.
Communication
Communication between teams must have some standards. Amazon’s document-driven culture is a great example of this. Other examples include things like:
- OKR processes for coordination between teams
- Paging protocols between teams
- API standards
If you don’t have a communication standard between teams, you’ll spend all of your time asking for clarification, for elaboration, and for the thing you should have just made a standard in the organization.
Again, you’ll be tested by willful leaders who claim this isn’t that important. Again, you must hold the line.
Core Values
Core values are the final thing to truly standardize. Ultimately all a business does is try to make money at low cost in a particular style. That last part is culture and values - it’s how you do your business. If you don’t standardize your core values, your organization becomes like a person without a soul, a zombie organization subject to random behavior and emergent badness.
Core Values are often named and unfortunately, often weaponized. You need to understand your core values very carefully and then monitor their application. Ensure that a strong tier of middle managers knows the nuance of what they mean and don’t mean.
Core values can also, for what it’s worth, just be something that is done by example and said in passing, without being formalized. Even if it’s not an official core value, if a CEO says “we’re not doing that because we’re not weasels”, “no weasel behavior” will become a core value.
Core values are necessary to standardize. When they work really well, it’s less of a cult vibe that people and more a lack of badness in the environment. Your values can become something you only become starkly aware of when you interact with other organizations and see how different, and often messed up, they are.
Consider Standardizing: Best Practices
The big gray middle of standardization is best practices, things like: project management, goal setting, managing up, communicating to customers… etc.
It’s really difficult to decide which best practices to standardize. Differences in vocational efficacy and strength of leadership play heavily into the ability to standardize best practices without mutiny.
One path here is evolutionary - as you see lots of people fail in ways you know you can prevent, you let a populist desire for standards emerge. This is slow and suboptimal, but it works. The tradeoff is that it doesn’t take much work, so maybe it’s the approach to take when you’re super busy or the team is growing fast (and full standardization is harder).
Another path is highly proactive - on things you know are best, you require them. This usually only works well when the leader saying what to do is a rock star - highly capable and experienced, able to execute with effective authority.
The final path is a middle ground, where as new leaders enter your organization and you reach consensus on best practices amongst leadership, and trickle that down to teams, a bit faster than failure demand would create.
All in all, standardizing best practices is something you must do over time. The best companies all get to a fairly robust set of best practices. So it’s not if, but when.
Don’t Try To Standardize: Micro-cultures, Excellence, Things Without Good Reasons
There are many things you should never try to standardize.
Don’t try to standardize microcultures, lunch breaks, or free time. One of the dumbest things managers do is say things like “you should spend less time playing ping pong and more time working.” Trying to standardize how knowledge workers spend their day is bound for to create docile, poor performers, or attrition. Focus on work that gets done, not the things between work.
Also, don’t try to standardize how you treat excellent people. Excellence requires special care. A top performer wants to take a 2 month break every year. Evaluate that premise on it’s own ROI, not on what can be standardized. There are downsides to not crystalized standards here, but they’re almost always worth it. The tradeoff is usually between unreasonable frustration from average performers for differing treatment, vs delight from top performers for being recognized for their impact. Prioritizing the latter is almost always a winning move for your organization.
Don’t try to standardize things that you don’t have a good reason to standardize. Examples of bad reasons:
- If we standardize now, even though we don’t have a great use case, we could in the future benefit from it.
- 100 people should standardize what they do so 1 person can save 20 minutes a month.
- It’s what everyone else does.
Summary
The best companies have the most important things standardized and almost nothing else. If you want to be a standard best company, follow suit.