Two years ago, our Abre team consisted of 12 or so folk who had each other on speed dial. Early-stage teams tend to have a mindmeld when you’re small, scrappy, and frankly wearing all the hats. Decisions, active and reactive, were known.
That doesn’t work as you scale.
And so we become more formalized. Practices, procedures, tools, and methods emerge. This is good. Formalization provides sanity and the opportunity to scale.
But.
How do you keep agency, creativity, and innovation alive? Formalization can lead to rigidity, which is great as you build the floors of your business. However, this lack of flexibility can lead to lost opportunities and big breakthroughs that can help you become an industry leader.
I’m a huge fan of Aaron Dignan’s Brave New Work. He tackles this tension by defining the difference between Defaults and Standards.
It’s easy to get in the habit of cemeting practices, methods, tools, and products into standards. Standards tend to be enforced. We use this tool and only this tool. We evaluate leads using this process and only this process. And so on. The great thing about standards is that they show us a proven way do some something and they are reliable (for the most part). The problem with standards is that they undermind our ability to use judgement, innovate, and learn. Instead of enforcing standards, think of proven practices as defaults. Defaults are exactly like standards with one exception: you don’t have to use them. A default says: If you don’t know what you’re doing, do this. If you don’t have time to think, try it our way. But if you’ve achieves some level of mastery in an area and you think you see a better way, feel free. Let us know how it goes, because either it you’ll generate further proof that our default is sound or you’ll sow the seeds for a new default that we can all benefit from.
-Aaron Dignan
I love the concept of defaults. It’s pragmatic and creative. It leaves room for flexibility and provides a structure for growth. It encourages innovation when you have time and knowledge (and find yourself asking questions).
I’m also cynical about excessive standardization and rules, not because they’re inherently wrong (reliability is essential), but because they’re sometimes used for questionable power dynamics.
Here’s a practical example of a default at Abre. As we’ve grown, and as we’re a distributed team, we’ve had to formalize the methods of communication. Our communication charter aims to enhance cross-team collaboration, reduce misunderstandings, and foster a cohesive work environment. It takes the predominant methods of communication like Slack, email, SMS, and phone calls and places guidelines like time restrictions, response time expectations, and expectations of action around the methods.
Yet, the key to this charter is the understanding that these methods are the default. The charter isn’t a set of rules. You are free to use agency, innovation, and judgment to step out of the norms defined. Sometimes, it may be appropriate to use smoke signals instead of Slack.
Defaults can be challenging for some people. We like our firm rules as they’re safe (or at least they feel safe). I’ve found educators, in particular, to wrestle with the idea that you can sometimes step out of the rule box to get a better outcome (or maybe not, but at least learn). What if you fail? Will you get in trouble? Most educators were good students and good students tend to be the ones who follow the rules the most.
But it’s clutch to keep the end goal in your line of sight. For schools, that means growing students toward success. For a business, it means servicing your customers and growing. Finding the balance between known best practices and innovation to deliver new value is a practical medium. Using defaults rather than standards is an excellent practice for any growing organization.
