Why is anyone afraid of the dark? Why can’t people leave terrible companies with appallingly dreadful leadership?
The unknown. The outcome is unpredictable and no one is sure of what happens next.
People like to know what to expect. Once people understand the expected outcome, anxiety lifts, and their focus locks in on the immediate task. Worry, fear, anxiety, anger, and frustration come from an inability to predict what is coming next – a fear of the unknown.
Any business that’s experienced sustained long-term success has innovated, edited, transformed, and shifted focus many times. Yet there’s a universal constant amongst them all. What do all businesses that achieved long-term sustainable success have in common?
Every global economy industry employs a series of structural guidelines that establish a standard expectation of business operations, compliance, consistency, and a baseline set of performance metrics. Industry-standard guidelines and specifications established by industry veterans provide the minimum criterion for measuring and managing business operations. Years and decades of trial and error, innovative ideas, and economic fluctuations across all industries establish a set of best practices related to production and business development.
Good businesses know their industry standards, expectations, and best practice guidelines; and transparently work to innovate through the established industry framework. Bad businesses take shortcuts. Shortcuts limit a business operation’s ability to grow and cultivate creativity because its processes, procedures, objectives, and outcomes are too inconsistent and unpredictable to measure. In addition, shortcuts increase a company’s liability threshold and create more accidents and injury leading to higher operating costs and impairing innovation and creative expansion.
Below are short-form key metrics to understand the industry standards concept and how they impact any business operation.
Modernization – industry standards create a baseline for creativity and innovation. Any effort to modernize and improve efficiencies and productivity begins with standard structures, sequence, transparency, and clear direction that mimics the accepted standards that similar companies and trade regulatory bodies developed over a significant period.
Compliance – standards help control and support regulatory requirement compliance and are essential for operational maintenance and potential growth. In addition, regulated compliance ensures transparency throughout the organizational chart which eliminates unexpected expenses related to injury, poor workmanship, production inefficiencies, and waste.
Waste Reduction – streamlined standardization of processes, procedures, and best practices ensures consistent production throughout the organizational chart reducing excessive man hours, injury, and illness incidents; while improving production metrics, efficiencies, profitability, and most importantly the quality of product and services offered.
Quality Assurance – a series of standardized expectations to minimize mistake and accident probability. In addition, when an entire team uses the same processes and procedures, companies experience a reduction in material costs and an improvement in production consistency, costs, and product/service output. More importantly, suppliers and clients both find it difficult to leave an operation whose quality of work, timing, and predictability surpass any comparable competitor.
Predictability creates a sense of consistent and regular accomplishment across the org chart when conducting business operations. Your old coach was right. Accomplishment creates confidence. When your team feels confident in their equipment, facility, colleagues, management team, and you the business owner, the business operation can’t help but grow beyond anyone’s expectations. In addition, predictability creates a definable outcome before task completion. If everyone knows the objective and the expected outcome, potential improvements, and process inefficiencies are easier to identify and easier to implement and/or edit. Once there is an established standard, creativity can increase exponentially.
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