What you allow, you endorse

Every standard you do not enforce gets taught anyway.

He is always ten minutes late. She kind of follows the script. That guy skips the inspection when he is running behind. Nobody wrote those down as policy. They became policy the first time they happened and nothing was said.

This is the part of management nobody warns you about. You are training the room constantly, and a lot of that training happens in the moments you decide to let something go.

I let things go for years, usually with a good reason. He is my best closer. She is going through something. It is one appointment. Every one of those calls felt small and reasonable. Every one of them was a rule I wrote for the whole building.

The tell is when your own exception comes back at you out of somebody else's mouth. A rep you have never coached explains that he skipped a step because so and so skips it. That is when you find out what you actually taught.

I am not arguing for running a tight ship because tight ships feel good. I am arguing that you do not get to opt out. The standard is whatever you tolerated last week. If you do not set it on purpose it gets set for you, and it only drifts one direction.

The fix is usually not harsh. Most of the time it is one sentence, said the same day, in private. That sentence costs you thirty seconds of discomfort. Skipping it costs you a policy you did not choose and cannot remember agreeing to.