Hey!

Chris here. Welcome to Blueprint—the newsletter to help you build a winning engineering team.

I don't know about you, but the quality of work, service, and leadership feels lower everywhere.

Think of the last time you went to a restaurant or had an appliance replaced at your house.

How good was the service? I'd venture to guess it was pretty terrible, right?

It's clear that customer service has really deteriorated, especially after COVID. But here's what everyone misses: they blame the employees.

But this is a standards problem more than anything else.

Quality doesn't die from the bottom up. It erodes from the top down.

Here's why understanding this is essential to building a great team. 👇️ 

📒 DEEP DIVE

The Bar Is Always Falling—Unless Leaders Hold It Up

Why mediocrity spreads when leaders stop demanding excellence.

The Leadership Mirror

If you have a manager with a low-quality bar, which employees are going to stay? People with low-quality bars.

The only boss who tolerates sub-par performance—whether it's consistently showing up late with weak excuses or turning in mediocre work —is someone who doesn't care about excellence.

If you're an A player working alongside someone who sets a low bar like this, you're going to be furious. You don't want that reflecting on you.

So you leave.

As a leader, what you tolerate is what you teach.

How Standards Cascade (and Decay)

For this reason, the quality bar is always set from the top down.

As a company grows, the only people who survive and thrive are the ones who match or exceed that standard. You either maintain the bar or you get pushed out—either by your own frustration at working with people below your level, or by leadership who won't accept subpar work.

But when you get it right, something powerful emerges at the peer level.

People start holding the line for their teammates. Not because of some mandate from above, but because they won't let each other down. They respect the quality their peers deliver, even if they don't grab beers after work. That team standard becomes self-reinforcing.

These individuals are those who say, "I'm not falling asleep on the job because I will not let these people down. They don't let me down, so I'm not going to be the one who drops the ball."

That's how you build a top-tier organization. It starts at the top, but it sustains through teams who care enough about each other to maintain excellence.

The reverse is also true. Low standards cascade faster than high ones. When people see others stop caring, they stop caring too.

Raising the Bar Again

If you're leading a team and you're honest about what you're seeing, you probably recognize some of this pattern.

The good news is that you can reset the standard.

Start by auditing what you tolerate:

• What are you letting slide that you know isn't good enough?

• Where have you compromised because it felt easier than holding the line?

• How have you let the quality bar fall in your own work?

Then communicate the non-negotiables. Be crystal clear about what excellence looks like in your organization. Don't assume people know or that they'll figure it out.

Finally, reinforce through consistency. This is where most leaders fail. They set a standard, then make exceptions when times get tough.

Here's what I've learned: great people never resent high standards. In fact, they crave them most when life is challenging.

People almost always stay at or leave a company based on their direct manager. If you work for someone excellent at their job, who holds a high bar, and who makes you better, you stay.

If your manager is a jerk with low standards, you leave.

The best companies are full of people who remained because their high-quality bar matched their manager's.

The Ripple Effect of Leadership

This pattern plays out way beyond individual companies.

When leaders of schools, governments, or entire industries lower their standards, the decay compounds across society.

I see it in the service industry. I see it in tech. I see it everywhere people interface with businesses and come away thinking, "Does anyone even care anymore?"

Excellence is fragile. It has to be modeled constantly to survive. One generation of leaders retires without passing on their values, and suddenly you're rebuilding from scratch.

The only way to maintain a high-quality organization as it grows is to stay ruthless about the standard at the top and build peer-level teams that refuse to compromise.

BEFORE YOU GO…

Quality is a reflection of the highest standard that's enforced.

The bar is set at the top, and everyone else either rises to meet it or finds somewhere else to work.

Because mediocrity has incredible gravity—it pulls everything down unless someone holds the bar up.

So if you're in a leadership position and you're frustrated with the quality of work around you, look in the mirror first.

What are you tolerating? What are you modeling? What standard are you actually enforcing when pressure hits?

If you're not happy with your answers, it's up to you to fix them.

Because the bar is always falling—unless you hold it up.

Talk soon,

Chris.