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Standards and Expectations Best Practice 1 – Provide Examples
What is clear to one person may not be so readily understood by another. Unlike quantifiably defined procedures, standards and expectations documents frequently rely on qualitatively defined concepts. Reliance on qualitatively conveyed performance guidelines, in turn, invites interpretation latitude and a higher probability of misinterpretation. Therefore, leaders should employ addition mechanisms to bolster standards interpretation consistency among individuals with varying backgrounds, knowledge, skills, and experiences.
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About the Author
Nathan Ives is a StrategyDriven Principal and Host of the StrategyDriven Podcast. For over twenty years, he has served as trusted advisor to executives and managers at dozens of Fortune 500 and smaller companies in the areas of management effectiveness, organizational development, and process improvement. To read Nathan’s complete biography, click here.
Performance standards and expectations drive managerial decisions and personal actions within an organization and serve to align an organization’s members to its vision, mission, and values. Such requirements necessarily demand an exertion of resources to perform the mandated actions.
Humans make mistakes, whether the result of carelessness or unintended misfortune. And no set of performance standards can fully alleviate all errors and their associated adverse outcomes.
Standards and expectations define how work is to be performed; providing guidance for the consistent, efficient, value-based execution of tasks. At the outset, developing a comprehensive set of performance standards often appears to be an overwhelming and daunting task as employees within even the ‘least complex’ organizations perform countless different activities every day. However, it is not intended that performance standards be developed for every conceivable activity. Rather, standards should be formulated for those activities reflecting organizational values, implementing corporate strategy, and presenting significant risk. The documented basis behind this finite set of standards provides the guidance needed for employees to make rational judgments about the conduct of less significant activities.
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