Shield or cage?

Shield or cage? ISO certification proves that you can follow rules. It does not prove that you are capable of acting in a crisis. Because of this, standards should not replace thinking.

Many COOs and quality managers have the same ambivalent relationship with standards. They know that ISO, audits and regulations are essential. They create legitimacy and basic order. At the same time, they sense that something about them paralyses the organisation.

Meetings revolve around evidence rather than results. Audits generate hectic activity – but little real insight. And in critical situations, everyone suddenly looks up instead of solving the problem.

This is not a failure of leadership. It is a systemic effect that I call the ‘compliance trap’.

The floor and the ceiling

ISO standards were created to establish a floor below which performance must not fall. They are the foundation. The problem begins when organisations mistakenly consider this floor to be the ceiling – the maximum achievable goal.

In this ‘dependent’ maturity phase, certification becomes an end in itself.

• People ask, ‘What does the regulation say?’
• Instead of, ‘What is right here and now?’

When the standard becomes the ceiling, people stop thinking. They replace judgement with compliance.

Compliance is not capacity

This is the crucial error in thinking that lulls many companies into a false sense of security until disaster strikes: certification proves that a system can follow rules. It does not prove that it can act in a crisis.

ISO measures compliance. It does not measure capacity. Capacity is the ability of a system to recognise weak signals, act without consultation and turn mistakes into learning experiences – even when the standard no longer covers the situation.

It is precisely these skills that are often systematically trained out of people in highly regulated cultures.

‘Don’t make too many rules’

Megaproject expert Bent Flyvbjerg sums it up brutally in his heuristics for ‘master builders’: ‘Don’t make too many rules.’

Not because rules are bad, but because too many rules stifle thinking. The more we try to cover every eventuality with a regulation, the more we train our employees to be helpless. We suggest: ‘There is a process for everything.’ But when reality deviates from the process (and it does so more and more often in the VUCA world), employees stand still.

From cage back to shield

Standards are intended as a shield. They are meant to protect. A good standard is like a railing at the edge of a precipice: it marks the boundary so that we can move freely and quickly within the safe area.

But in many companies, the shield becomes a cage. The bars of bureaucracy are so narrow that no movement is possible. The standard no longer serves the work; the work serves the standard. ‘That’s not possible; it’s not part of the process’ becomes the universal excuse for not taking responsibility.

The hard ask: the test for your standards

Take a look at your process landscape. Do your standards serve to enable decisions? Or do they serve to prevent decisions?

If your employees first look for the rule before using common sense in an unforeseen situation, you do not have a secure system. You have a bureaucratic one.

The path to true excellence (Capacity Shift) does not lie in more rules. It lies in clarity. Use standards as solid ground on which to stand – in order to reach for higher things.

Further reading

„Heuristics for Masterbuilders: Fast and Frugal Ways to Become a Better Project Leader“, Bent Flyvbjerg, July 2022

Flyvbjerg warns that too many rules stifle personal responsibility and creativity, and recommends: ‘Don’t make too many rules; most don’t need them; address those who do directly.’

Explore more in The Shift Series

• The Hero Reflex
  Why is everyone looking up? Because the boss (the hero) has always solved it before. If you want to understand why your team is silent, you need to read this article.