Why your team ignores your "standards" (hint: they don't exist)

In partnership with

GUSTO: Our 5-letter enforcement system

Your team isn't ignoring your standards.

Your standards don't exist.

I know you have them in your head. Clear expectations about how work gets done, how projects start, how people communicate.

But if it's not written down, championed, and made fingertip-friendly for your team to see, it's not a standard.

It's just a wish.

The Creation Problem

Here's the thing: creating standards has never been easier.

AI can help you:

• Define your vision in minutes

• Test it against blind spots you didn't know you had

• Refine it until it's crystal clear

• Turn it into presentations and documentation

You can literally have working standards in an hour.

The only reason you don't? You're not prioritizing it.

The Chaos Cost

Every minute you operate without standards, chaos multiplies.

Because every tool wants to be everything now:

• Zoom wants to control your email

• Slack wants to manage your projects

• Your project management system wants to handle communication

• Your community platform wants to be your CRM

Without standards, your team picks whatever feels easiest in the moment.

Result? Important stuff gets lost in the noise.

Our GUSTO System

In our company, we use GUSTO as our core values:

• Good enough to get going

• Use the system to improve the system

• Speed to result

• Trust but verify

• Out with the trash

Almost every one of these comes down to enforcement.

"Good enough to get going" doesn't mean skip the system. It means get it into the system fast so we can improve it.

"Use the system to improve the system" means if you see a problem, you fix it through our established process.

"Trust but verify" means someone sends you a Google doc with comments and tags? Nope. That goes in our project management system or it doesn't get done.

The Enforcement Reality

Here's what I learned during a busy patch when I let standards slip:

Enforcement isn't about being a micromanager.

It's about making the right way the easy way.

When standards are clear and everyone knows them, enforcement becomes a group effort. The team holds each other accountable because they all know what "right" looks like.

The AI Angle

This applies to AI too.

AI is only as good as the parameters you give it. Without clear prompts and context, it's trying to summarize the entire internet instead of your specific knowledge base.

Standards matter even more with robots than with humans.

Starting Now

There's never a perfect time to create standards.

But it's also never too late to start.

The longer you wait, the harder it gets and the more chaos accumulates.

So here's your hour challenge: Pick one area where things feel chaotic. Define the standard. Write it down. Share it with your team.

Then enforce it consistently.

Your future self (and your team) will thank you.

To Your AI-First Success,
Jeff Sauer

P.S. What's one area where you need clearer standards? Hit reply and let me know. Sometimes just naming it out loud helps you commit to fixing it.

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