Do you know rules are made for the guidance of wise men and the obedience of fools?

Whenever you're doing something more than once there should be a clear procedure. We call them “standards” or “rules”. That means that there should be lots of standards.

There are pros and cons to having standards:

✅ The pros:

• They help speed up the decision making process – getting you to the best decision faster
• They help maintain consistency

❌ The cons:

• They take time to write in a generic fashion
• Technological rules rust easily. Technologies and techniques change often, so you must be on the lookout for the new and better approaches and continually update these
• They have errors as they are written by imperfect people
• People will sometimes follow an inappropriate rule. A set of rules can never predict every path, so cases can and will appear that the standards fail to cater for

Figure: As this sign demonstrates, no rule is universal

Enhancing standards through continuous and collaborative improvement

Never ignore a potential improvement or expect someone else to work on it.

If you believe something can be improved or a standard is outdated, it's important to take action. The best approach is through a team effort, where everyone contributes small improvements regularly.

Whenever you come across a standard which needs updating or improving you have 3 options:

1. Fix it yourself straight away and edit the rule (preferred)
2. Fix it yourself later if it's too big. In this case, send yourself an email
3. Ask someone else to fix it following the change "x" to "y"