February 2, 2026
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“What does great look like here?”
I thought it was rhetorical. But this guy was serious. He was only a week in and I had just delivered a new employee onboarding talk.
I stumbled through my answer, which I’m quite sure, made it more confusing for everyone.
The awkward interaction didn’t sit well with me. It was such a simple question. Why didn’t I have a simple answer?
I just hadn’t thought about it like that. It’s not that we didn’t have a high bar on product or brand, or know what a great team member looked like. But I had never defined “what great looked like” in a detailed way.
Sure we had our mission, values and vision, but this was different. We needed a way to share our perspective on what “great” meant to us.
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I first defined our standards after reading Let My People Go Surfing by Yvon Chouinard, the founder of Patagonia. This book is a masterclass in culture, and standards are at its core.
In the book, Yvon lays out Patagonia’s eight “philosophies”:
Each one defines exactly how Patagonia sees the world. This guidance is invaluable for all current and future employees. It shapes and protects their culture over time, long after Yvon left as CEO.
We were so inspired by this approach, we did the same at my company Classy (acquired by GoFundMe in 2022). But we boiled them down to four categories (brand, product, performance, leadership) and called them our standards.
Each one was explained in a simple 1-2 page format that read like a manifesto. Hand full of pages, massive leverage.
Not every company will have the same standards. In fact, they shouldn’t. Your standards are what make you unique. They create differentiation at the decision level.
Are we holding the line on what actually matters?
Or will we succumb to the pressure and be like everyone else?
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What’s the difference between values and standards?
This is a common question that comes up in Highland Academy. Let me break it down for you. Values are what you believe and how you act across the company. It’s the starting point.
I recommend you define each value so your team fully understands what it means. Just a few simple bullets works magic. Like this:
Standards, on the other hand, define what great looks like across various dimensions of your business. Your standards should align with your values. No contradictions.
So let’s look at an actual example, starting with one of Classy’s values: Create Meaningful Value. To us, this meant adding measurable value to our customers. We were a software company that helped nonprofits raise money online. So, donation volume was the most important metric to our customers.
When we created our Product Standardsdocument, we recognized that “Create Meaningful Value” mapped well into product development and customer outcomes. This slide shows a snippet of the overall Product Standards doc, but you can see how we wove this value directly into the standard.
“If a product direction, feature, or decision goes against growing donation volume in some way, it should be highly scrutinized or killed outright.”
The line in the sand is clear. Great product to us means growing donation volume for our nonprofit customers.
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Four Inspiring Examples
When I was growing Classy there were a handful of companies that I admired for the way they defined, enforced and communicated their standards. I don’t see business exactly the same way as them, and that’s the point. They were clear about what “great” looked like to them (not everyone on earth), and it inspired me to do the same for Classy.
Brand: Mailchimp
Mailchimp led with their brand. Fun, quirky, unapologetic. Every public-facing artifact mattered. Clean design on everything. They brought a mascot into enterprise software, which was unusual at the time.
Most B2B companies played it safe with sterile corporate branding. Mailchimp said fuck that. How they presented themselves to the world mattered more than playing it safe. It was edgy, but still cleaner than everyone else.
Product: 37 Signals
37 Signals practiced minimalism before it became a buzzword. Their product standard was brutally simple: make core features much better instead of adding new ones.
While competitors bloated their products with features nobody used, 37 Signals kept saying no. They kept their team at 50 people for years to avoid bureaucracy. Co-founder David Heinemeier Hansson invented Ruby on Rails and they documented everything. They built in public before it was a marketing strategy.
Performance: Netflix
Netflix killed annual reviews. They had the keeper test instead: would you fight to keep this person? If not, help them find something better. Instead they bet on continuous feedback and learning, not a once-a-year administrative nightmare.
They were ruthless about cutting bottom performers, almost Jack Welch style. They started the whole “company isn’t a family” thing, that everyone copied later. They acted like a professional sports team. High performers stay, bottom performers get traded.
Leadership: Enterprise
Enterprise Rent-A-Car hired college kids and gave them real responsibility early. They were extremely intentional about career paths. Every level was defined: what you need to do, what’s expected, what type of leader you need to be, how you should act.
How they developed leaders became a massive competitive advantage. They were so good, other companies were forced to poach from their vast talent pool (a strategy that never works out very well). And employees resisted, they actually wanted to stay!
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Standards are your perspective on what great looks like.
These aren’t suggestions. They’re non-negotiables that define your company’s DNA. They make you, uniquely you.
Here’s the link to Highland’s company standards template.
Till next time,
Never say die 🏴☠️
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P.S. In January we crossed 1,000+ students in Highland Academy – the 100% self-paced version of Highland. Since opening it up, we’ve had CEOs, executives and managers from around the world signing up!
If you’re interested, you can start your own 7-day free trial right now. You have nothing to lose.
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