Reset Your Standards to Be Scalable and Sustainable
I caught a replay of “The Princess Bride” and laughed my way through the scene where Vizzini tells the giant Fezzik to finish off Westley. Fezzik immediately nods his head, but then asks, “What is my way?”
When Vizzini tells him to surprise Westley with a rock to the head, Fezzik objects and replies, “My way’s not very sportsman-like.”
Have you ever felt like Fezzik, where “your standards” are actually someone else’s unreasonable expectations? The alternative is to define principles that work for you. Start with a short personal inventory and combine it with your lived experience.
Let’s meet someone whose medical crisis prompted her to re-examine and reconfigure how she approached working.
Are You at a “That Does It” Moment?
From the outside, it looked like Lisa Rubin’s life was going to plan. She was thrilled to be hired as a litigator in New York after her advocacy work in Washington, DC. She enjoyed a high profile and significant paycheck, and her home life was also humming with the arrival of her daughters.
Lisa had poured her heart and soul into the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act, so representing women and girls in private practice seemed like the next step. But there was a drift between how she envisioned Big Law life and reality.
She realized, “When I worked on the Hill, I worked similar hours, but I was buoyed by the mission. There was stress, but there was also excitement and joy. At a law firm, I often had a sense of dread, and none of the underlying fire that animated my time in politics. I usually felt my happiest when I was doing pro bono work.”
Rubin hit a “that does it” crisis point trying to balance a back injury, billable hours, and a special needs daughter. She started listening to her instincts and wound up redefining her career.
3 Questions to Align Your Standards with Your Work Skills
In the June series, Set the Standard, we’re meeting inspiring people who set a new standard for themselves after overcoming difficult circumstances. Like the case study, are standards that once worked starting to work against you? And are you worried about letting yourself and everyone else down if you drop your high bar for performance?
Here’s the good news: You don’t have to trade away your principles, exceptional results, or professional stature. Simply start applying two words to determine whether a standard still aligns with your core beliefs: Scalable and sustainable. Choices that are scalable and sustainable go hand in hand with quality.
For instance, standards such as being authentic and having integrity? Those traits are a yes year in and year out. But what no one tells you is that standards aren’t a one and done. They can also shift in healthy ways according to your life stage.
Let’s start with three questions you can use for a personal check-in and replay them against the case study. You’ll see that hints about how to redefine yesses and no’s are hiding in plain sight. For example:
1. What kind of work makes me happiest? Lisa Rubin’s clue was her whole-hearted yes to pro bono. Doing only litigation cases? Not sustainable.
2. What brings me the most stress or drains me? For Lisa, ever-increasing billable hours weren’t scalable. Nope!
3. What excites me? Lisa gave a big yes to family time. However, she also realized that self-imposed expectations — like thinking working moms had every aspect of parenting figured out — were stressful and unsustainable. Wellness appointments and connecting with other parents had to go back on the books.
Meeting everyone else’s needs but never knowing or managing your own isn’t much of an accomplishment. (Even Wonder Woman and Superman only had two hands!)
So, take a quick inventory and make your standards clear and easy to articulate. Maximize your work skills superpowers, such as problem-solving, managing your day, and collaborating, and use them to your advantage. Reset your standards to make them scalable and sustainable.
