The Superpower Series, Week 5 of 8: The Keeper of the Standard
Last week was the Rescuer, the founder who shows up when things go wrong. This week is the founder who shows up when things are almost right.
The Keeper of the Standard
The founder knows what great looks like.
You can look at a proposal, a product, a hire, a customer experience, a piece of writing, and instantly know:
Yes.
No.
Not quite.
That eye is a big part of why the company is any good. Customers feel it even when they can’t name it.
But “I know it when I see it” doesn’t scale.
Eventually, the company needs more people who know it when they see it.
And know exactly what makes it “it.”
Two Edits
A customer is upset about a job that went sideways. Your customer service lead drafts a reply and runs it by you.
You make two changes.
You add a date for when someone will be out to fix it. And you cut her opening line, “I’m so sorry for the frustration,” because you’d never open that way.
The first change is the standard. A customer with a problem always leaves knowing exactly what happens next, and when.
The second change is just you. Her opening wasn’t wrong. You just wouldn’t have written it.
She can’t tell which is which. Both came back marked up. So she does the reasonable thing. Next time, she tries to write like you.
Multiply that across every email, proposal, product review, and hire, and you get a company full of capable people quietly imitating you rather than asking what specifically is the standard.
When the standard lives only in your head, people don’t learn the standard. They learn you.
Making the Invisible Visible
The work is making the invisible visible.
What actually makes this excellent? What makes it mediocre? Which details matter? Which are personal preferences that you may decide to do differently?
Those questions are harder than they look. Your eye works in about two seconds. Explaining it takes ten minutes with a lot of “it just feels off.”
But look at what happens when you take that time. That customer email comes down to one sentence: they always leave knowing what happens next, and when. Your service lead can hit that without you. She can keep her own framing. But she knows to include the standard.
This isn’t about lowering the bar. For some founders, the standard is the reason the company exists. Keep it. But make it visible.
The point is a bar other people can see. A bar that can be discussed. Eventually, your team will even see things you missed. Because you taught them what’s important, and why.
Your Fingerprints Can Hide Your Standard
Founders have to separate the standard from their own fingerprints.
Because there is a huge difference between:
“This isn’t how I would have done it.”
and
“This isn’t good enough.”
A lot of founders never really make that distinction.
Just because you wouldn’t have done it that way doesn’t make it wrong.
Your fingerprints are all over the company, and plenty of them belong there. They’re part of why it has worked.
But a fingerprint isn’t a standard. It just feels like one from the inside.
Fingerprints may be how everyone knows you were there.
But eventually you want the success to happen without you.
A Question for This Week
Pull up the last thing you sent back with comments.
Go through them one at a time. Which ones are “this isn’t good enough”? Which are “this isn’t how I would have done it”?
For the first kind, write down why. That’s your standard, finally somewhere other people can see it.
For the second kind, try deleting them before you hit send.
There are six other roles founders often end up having to let go of. To see them all, check out my post on Substack.
Next week: The Source of Urgency. Nothing really becomes urgent until the founder feels urgency. You’ve delegated the work. Have you delegated the pressure?
— Jeff