#setting standards

April 18, 1962

President John F. Kennedy’s interview at the White House with former First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt on the status of women.

JFK, “As the greeks said, the definition of happiness is the full use of your powers along lines of excellence.”

Do not go unnoticed. No matter how small someone appreciates what you have done. A simple act of kindness will make someones day. Not gloating but here is a couple I have done that required some work = burning calories. 

The church bordering my property. Weed eating their creek adjoining my property last month. X 20 Min of work each time                                                    Angie, mom and dads neighbor. No weed eater and her step dads is messed up  X 15 Min of work each of the last two weeks                                                    MR Tripplet, mom and dads neighbor. Has not been feeling well  X 5 Mins last week weed eating

If you want to change anything, whether it is quality, safety, business, organizations, etc.  It Starts with the culture.  The culture drives the process to help achieve excellence.  Culture establishes a sense of belonging by establishing a shared personality of the team/organization which parlays into security and unified belonging. It gives unspoken rules of how to react and interact, communicate, and solve problems in everyday life. By providing societal stability through shared morals and ideology it unifies large groups to work together to protect and strengthen the community/organization they are in.

Bill Walsh (a former American professional and college football coach) had guidelines for establishing culture.  Which to me are the foundations of not only establishing culture but effecting real and valuable change and worthy of reviewing.  I was reminded of them when I came across a meme that listed the six elements needed.

Alignment which is simply setting the standard. You have to establish what behaviors are expected to include attitudes.  This establishes clarity to unify as a team behind and focus on.

Communication -The aforementioned clarity when communicated will create consistency. By maintaining consistency and staying true to the standards, people perform better and maintain consistency.

Ownership which Bill simply says as “Own your Role” Everyone needs to understand what their responsibilities are and what they are working on mastering. This allows organizations to become more capable and dependable.

Vision and Values meaning “The Why”. This strengthens when people understand the beliefs behind the standard.

Connection. Bill truly believed Relationships Matter. Culture is human in nature. If you show respect and care, people feel seen and heard, as well as supported and valued.

Accountability. I used to think accountability and ownership was the same thing, but I was wrong. Accountability is part of Ownership. Simply put, Hold The Line.  Which means don’t break or fall below the line which is the standard. Standards only hold when they are reinforced. “Measure the behaviors that matter, correct what slips, and make the standard real every day.”

“The culture precedes positive results. It doesn’t get tacked on as an afterthought on your way to the victory stand.” -Bill Walsh

Why set standards that no one can achieve?

A rule that bends every time it is tested is not a rule; it is a memory edited after the fact.

If a standard can never be fully achieved, it can look pointless like pouring water into a sieve. But the argument in Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals by Immanuel Kant is not that humans will meet the standard perfectly. The argument is that without such a standard, the idea of justification itself collapses.

When you evaluate an action, you need some criterion that is not just your mood, fear, or advantage in that moment. If the rule changes every time circumstances pressure you, then there is no difference between reasoning and rationalizing. Kant is trying to prevent that slide. The standard acts like a measuring line that stays fixed while your situation changes.

It is similar to how navigation works. A compass does not guarantee that you will walk in a perfectly straight line across mountains, storms, or obstacles. But without the compass, you are no longer navigating you are just moving and later inventing a story about why the direction made sense. So the standard is not meant to be a target you hit perfectly. It is meant to prevent self-justification from rewriting the rule after the action. That is the key argument.

There is also a second reason that is more practical than it first appears. Many systems only work if participants orient themselves toward a strict rule even if they sometimes fail to meet it. Think of aviation safety, medicine, engineering, or education. If the rule were lowered to “do what is realistically achievable under pressure,” reliability would drop fast because people would adjust the rule downward each time difficulty appears. High standards act as stabilizers, not because humans meet them perfectly, but because they slow down the erosion of responsibility. The rule for teachers about protecting children first is not there because every teacher will perform perfectly in every emergency. It exists so that when a crisis happens, the orientation is already decided. Without that prior rule, instinct and chaos take over. Kant wants to keep the rule from dissolving into convenience.