Standards exist in every discipline.  Effective Dates in Workday, Boolean logic in systems, federal regulation in hiring and the color wheel in art are all examples of Standards.  It is certainly possible to get by NOT knowing them, having these tools available on demand makes getting things done significantly easier.  Not only that, it makes working with others in your field easier as well.  A shared vocabulary and understanding enhances collaboration by allowing teams to quickly share information.

Martial arts are a great example of a group that uses standards.  Generally these are sets of movements or ideas that you need to learn in order to progress.  As a newer student these standards serve as the next hurdle towards rank advancement and as a literal standard everyone your relative experience and rank needs to know.  As a more advanced rank you realize that these don’t just serve to roughly bucket folks by what they know, they serve as the building blocks towards more interesting things.

Professionally standards are generally learned earlier in our careers.  We go after a bachelors degree to get a solid understanding of fundamentals.  Our first jobs teach us basic skills like problem solving and communication.  Our first year(s) coding are spent learning terminology and concepts.  In many cases standards can be codified and taught in a structured way, for example a course at university.  They can also be taught in an unstructured way, copying an existing piece of art/code/whatever, for example.  The former relies on an instructor to help guide you, which is great since you benefit from their skill and experience.  The latter relies on your own self-exploration, which is great since you learn how to learn.

For me it gets interesting once you know the standards in your field.  In them martial arts, for example, the standard forms are interesting and have a very important place in training… but they’re ‘boring’.  They’re the same… we know them (although I can easily argue you can always learn more from them).  Understanding the underlying lessons in them, and then applying them to something new, now that’s interesting.  The same is true in other areas.  We’ve all written a “for” loop that counts to 10, but getting to apply that idea to a webpage that solves a real problem is MUCH more interesting and satisfying.

Unfortunately reality is a bit grittier; the group you work with my not have the same set of standards.  While this provides an advantage in terms of differences of opinion and skillsets, time and energy can be lost if part of the group relies on standards that, well, aren’t standard.

I find that a lot of groups need up-front time spent agreeing on what the standards are (or even understanding they exist).  This shifts the focus from “lets go build something cool with our collective background knowledge” to “lets agree on what the tools are”.  This can easily feel like a delay in getting to the work at hand, but it is time very well spent.  The start of a project should include time to level set on standards including what specific terms mean, what methodologies or tools will be used and how to communicate.  This will reduce the change of a misunderstanding as to standards and free up time to innovate.

At the end of it all standards are just that.  Standard.  Knowing that something will be the same, regardless of where you happen to be or who you work with, is incredibly powerful.  This common language allows you to look into new topics, and explore old ones in new ways.  They also serve as a fallback, something you can use and rely on when things get pear-shaped.  The trick is to share your standards with others, and to be on the lookout for opportunities to apply them in new and creative ways.