It is important to have high standards. For the most part, life will pay any price you ask of it. The people who achieve the most in the world have incredibly high standards. It is like this with businesses as well. A great piece of machinery, or a great service, is like this because of the standards that are followed. You have personal values, beliefs, and performance benchmarks. Your business also has these characteristics, and they are referred to as company standards. Think of standards as your business personality and vision coupled with the rules you live and work by. Your small business standards will likely mirror your personal standards, and your customers, clients and employees will form an opinion about your business – and your brand – based on these values.

Controlling and measuring standards

With people, it is the psychology of standards that separates the best people from the ordinary. For people with high standards, they believe that everything matters and that nothing is small enough not to have a benchmark or standard. They hold themselves to high standards because they know that without doing this, they will not get to where they want to go or become the people they want to be. They get “stressed” about not meeting the standards (their goals) and use this stress to drive them forward to get better and better. Stress is drive when you convert it. You want to have stress to drive yourself forward.

You can see how standards work in the fitness arena. If someone is a professional bodybuilder, they are generally going to be far more demanding of themselves from a fitness standpoint than someone who is not. They are going to work out harder, lift more, eat differently, and live a different lifestyle than someone without these sorts of standards.

The Importance of Being Extraordinary

There is a part of you—and all of us—that is also outstanding and will come out if we set the right standards. Everyone can be outstanding with the right standards. If you say you cannot be outstanding, you are slapping the face of your creator. The entire secret to being outstanding lies in the standards you set for yourself. There is nothing on this earth that does not have a purpose. You are in control over what happens to you and can control it by the standards you set for yourself. Life has meaning when you give it your all.

Comfort in where you are is dangerous. People who get too comfortable are the ones who get fat, lose their jobs, whose spouses walk out on them and who die early deaths because they do not take good care of themselves. People who get too comfortable do not earn the respect of the world, their children, peers, and others at anywhere near the level they are capable of. People who get too comfortable slowly waste away.

Which brings me to my conclusion: high standards start at the top. Leadership sets those standards and communicates expectations to the key people who then communicate them throughout the organisation, no matter whether the whole organisation consists of one person or hundreds. They train people on the standards, create metrics and review procedures to ensure the standards are maintained and enforced. If, or when, it is found that standards are not being maintained, remedial action is activated. I know this sounds simple, but it really is not, and involved tremendous work and energy, no one said maintaining excellence was easy as with being extraordinary. It takes a constant, never-ending effort to accomplish year-in and year-out. But the benefits are enormous.