Evidence of thinking of standards (and standard work) in terms of compliance is right there in front of us. It’s largely in our language …
- ‘Process audits.’ (‘Audit’ tends us toward ‘compliance’.)
- “They didn’t follow the standard.”
- “Are we dealing with a training issue or a compliance issue?”
The third bullet above might be the most concerning as it leads us away from considering if the conditions for success are present. I.e. what are the inputs / influences that are governing our chances of ‘success’?
Sidney Dekker points out that the norms of operation are usually lower than the ‘standard’. Most of the time that’s gotten away with. Sometimes though risks bubble up, come together and something bad happens. We then tend to look at whoever was doing the work at that time and place – the person(s) who happened to be there when the risks combined even though they were doing what everyone else does.
Mark Rosenthal illustrates this as follows:
Whenever he asks a room if there is anyone who has NEVER mistakenly run a red light or Stop sign, no-one puts their hand up. But there was rarely an accident. Other conditions needed to be there – a vehicle coming the other way.
Thinking of standards in terms of compliance impacts our efforts in many of the usual things seen in organisations striving for continuous improvement. Leader Standard Work (LSW), Tier Meetings, Problem Solving and the likes will have a strong ‘are you complying?’ flavour if we look at standards as something to be enforced.
There is an alternative to thinking of standards in terms of compliance. It will probably feel confronting, it’s a paradigm change …
Our starting assumption in this paradigm is ‘everyone involved is doing the very best they can to do exactly what we need them to do’. Then, when what we needed to happen doesn’t happen, the ‘investigation’ focusses on how we failed those involved.
Further, instead of standards being a means by which management tell people what to do, standards are viewed as the foundational means by which a team member can call out management for being ambiguous or unreasonable (in the expectation of following a standard). Everything arising from having standards (process checks, LSW etc.) is then driven by mutual curiosity rather than being a simple transactional relationship. Reminder … the whole point of having a standard is to provide a reference for comparing actual to what we need to be happening.
To truly embed this paradigm, we build the comparison into the process in real time. This is the only way to prevent the standard becoming just a document. Not only do we quickly see ‘abnormal’ in the output, we enable the question of “did we get the output (and outcome) the right way (i.e. by practicing what’s in the standard)?”
The environment we’re headed for is …
The Team Member has clear standards for quality characteristics that they create, and they have a way of verifying that the output conforms. They have a method to follow with confidence. When abnormal happens, leaders first ask “how did we fail them?” Perhaps more accurately “which one or more of the conditions for success went missing?” (By the way, the first thing the Frontline Leader does in response to ‘abnormal’ is they themselves attempt to practice the standard exactly. There’s a fair chance they’ll quickly learn why the Team Member ‘failed’.)
The environment above will, for many, be hard work to establish and won’t be established overnight. But it will be worth striving for via small steps starting with a fundamental adjustment in mindset toward the top.
(The content of this article is drawn from email exchanges with Mark Rosenthal during July 2026. Thankyou Mark.)