---
title: "Standards"
description: "Without the institutional support, what will drive you to adhere to high standards?"
author: "Rahim Rasul"
type: "Article"
published: "2018-12-25"
thread: "The Field"
url: "https://iloveprocess.com/articles/standards/"
site: "I Love Process"
---

# Standards

_Without the institutional support, what will drive you to adhere to high standards?_

[Cover image: Illustration in red and black: a lone figure at the bottom of a towering, half-built industrial hall lit from above]

A job hands you a structure. There are walls and schedules, a boss, and a level of compliance and performance you have to keep up if you want to keep the job. For anyone who has spent years working inside a system, operating independently can be harder than it looks.

I learned this after January 2002, when I left my first professional job and started working for myself. Working independently is different. What was once walls and structure becomes an ambiguous vision you have to hold up on your own.

[Figure: Inside a system, walls all round and the bar held up by peers, the boss and the group; on your own, the walls are gone and the same bar is held up by you alone]

## What the structure was doing for you

Inside an organization, it’s easy to track your performance. Your peers who were achievers gave you a reference point for the standards you were reaching for. The organization and the group brought out the best in you. They set the bar at the level you were expected to perform.

Take the institution away, and a new question shows up: what will drive you to hold high standards now?

It’s easy to follow rules. It’s easy to behave in a way that exceeds your boss’s expectations. It’s easy to operate inside a framework to avoid the consequences.

> Without this framework, what happens to you? What drives you?

What are high standards, for you? What are you capable of? How high can you reach without the historical influence of your peers pushing you forward? Can you construct the parameters to operate at a high level on your own? Without your peers, can you perform at a new dimension of high standards?

## Two different species

There are so many kinds of people in the world. Many of them excel within the right structures. There’s another class that creates structures, that builds systems, that conceptually imprints the world with their brand of possibility.

These two are different species that operate within the same system. Their minds would be considered alien to each other, yet they’re graded on the same scale.

## Choose your lane

It’s a choice. Each of us decides which lane we operate in, and this is the life we’ve chosen and accepted. It’s insane to compare yourself with the other side, to look at a game you’re not playing and measure yourself against its growth, its rewards, and its benefits, none of which are a function of what you chose.

[Figure: Two lanes: people who excel within structures and people who create them, each lane running along its own measure, one the game you’re playing and the other a game you’re not]

We create so that others can consume. What we build gives them power.

---

Neither is right or more special. The only standard that matters is the one you set for the game you’re actually playing.