I am reading Standards: Recipes for Reality, by Lawrence Busch (http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=12691). I purchased the book because of the review I read in the Wall Street Journal (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204012004577073253871935524.html). Serving an infrastructure business, the electric power industry (http://www.pearlstreetinc.com/) , I deal with standards all the time, but usually not overtly. I’ve only read a small portion of this book so far, but I am impressed with the expansive view the author takes about what constitutes a “standard.” Busch is a professor of sociology at Michigan State University. I am (slowly) working towards a doctorate in Sociology and have been fascinated with the field since I took an intro level course in college. This is a book of philosophy, organizational dynamics, technology, innovation (and how standards inhibit it), and many other things, but it boiled down to, for me, a study in masking the complexity of human endeavor, and the use of standards as a proxy for trust.

Audits, certifications, licenses, playbooks, scripts, recipes, musical notation, compositions, protocols, weights and measurements, tests, titles and occupation, rank, validation, verification, rules, laws, guidelines, norms, tolerances, precision, awards, prizes, authentication – all of these are part of standards and standardization. Standards engender prestige, garner trust, and facilitate mechanization. Any garden hose I might buy in a store will have the same connection to the sprinkler I just used to water the lawn. I can write and post these words because of a standard protocol for transmitting information digitally over the Internet.

I probably felt more comfortable purchasing this book because the author is “a Distinguished Professor in the Center for the Study of Standards in Society in the Department of Sociology at Michigan State University…” Distinguished Professor is capitalized because a professor at a prestigious university holds a higher standard in society than the title of garbage collector. The book is published by MIT Press, which undoubtedly holds a higher “standard” for books on this type of subject that one out of a local community college. Forming an academic “Center” undoubtedly leads to recognition as the “standard” for information and analysis about standards.

I have worked with clients and innovators most of my career who want to revolutionize the electric power industry with technology. But new technology means risk. Infrastructure businesses take as little risk as possible. Not because they are business run by bad people but because their customers only care about one thing – in the case of electricity, that the power stays on for the lowest amount of money possible (and more recently, with an acceptable level of environmental impact). I hate to break it to my clients but my industry mostly wishes for three big dog suppliers of equipment or technology who will respond to a specification (itself a standard of sorts) such that three credible bids can be received and evaluated. It’s a business that craves standards and shuns innovation. Being highly regulated doesn’t foster innovation either.

I have a degree in chemical engineering. I have been walking around, and analyzing, complex engineered systems my entire career. That hasn’t stopped me from being in awe the next time I am at a power plant, a refinery, a recycling center, or even get in my car, buy groceries, cross a bridge, or text my daughters on my cell phone. It all works! Over and over and over again. Sure, there are blips, bumps, service interruptions (it’s 98F and the compressor on my AC just conked out after twenty six years), but this really complex stuff works just about all the damn time. Yes, I know, that just creates unrealistic expectations. The better something works, the better it has to work, or the customer isn’t happy. That’s why we have standards.

Often I think we need fewer standards. Busch points out how the formation of standards clashes with democracy, confers power and influence, and lead to domination. They extend beyond those who “established them, standards take on a life of their own that extends beyond the authorities in both time and space.” I know in my work standards are written by technical committees and it requires time and money to participate in the committee. They are usually written so the “big dogs” win.

But I also think we could use some new standards. A standard of zero outages is unrealistic, yet that is what most of us expect from electricity, water, and fuel suppliers, and Internet service providers. So wouldn’t it be helpful if we had a standard to compare to when we experience outages? Some standard for climate modeling might amp down the rhetoric around global warming. We might be less surprised at catastrophic events if we could benchmark them to a standard.

Perhaps more importantly, we should understand that many “standards” are anything but. Standards used in accounting and by financial engineers are often so ambiguous, they allow each firm to apply their own valuation models. Who can you trust when everyone has their own version of the truth? It’s especially insidious because the fact that “numbers” are involved- mathematical, computer, and statistical models and algorithms-masks the fact no real standards are in place for how money is invested and transacted by Wall Street firms. I hope Busch gets into this aspect of standards. Many standards I deal with simply add to the volumes of paperwork, but don’t lead to faster, better, or cheaper.

Finally, it’s interesting to participate in an endeavor that has a decidedly different framework of standards than the one I am used to (engineering and complex systems): fiction writing. Sure, you have to follow rules of grammar and punctuation (style sheets are another form of standard!) and construct a logical flow to your ideas through sentences and paragraphs and chapters. But, after that, what constitutes bad, mediocre, good, great, or superior fiction? If you have a Masters in Fine Arts (MFA), you may enjoy a higher standard for how your fiction will be received by agents and publishers and the academic community (which published the vast majority of short stories).

In one sense, fiction writing may seem like a profession with a weak framework of standards. But maybe not, since a huge pool of would-be novelists (we all have a story to tell, don’t we?) are stopped at the gates of publishing glory by a relatively small band of gatekeepers (agents, editors, professors, etc). Apparently, they know what the standards are but you don’t. You can try to reach readers directly through self-publishing (which ends up being 99% self-promotion), but that’s the wild west of publishing right now. Standards don’t exist.

When a community lacks transparent standards, it has to achieve trust and validation in other ways, usually by a buddy system. Sadly, a buddy system isn’t conducive to innovation either. The Fifty Shades of Gray that has become the 5-million shades of gray kind of tells that story. The community (publishers, writers, agents, bookstores) learns to trust what sells. Self-publishers rely on friends and family to “MAKE SOME NOISE” to send a work viral. That might be a standard for promotion but not necessarily for quality.

Whether your endeavor is governed by set of sophisticated but transparent standards, or a buddy system standing in for a set of weak or non-existent set of standards, it appears that the “system” will converge sooner rather than later and stifle ideas and innovation.

I invite you to learn more at the Center for the Study of Standards in Fiction.Yes, just kidding 🙂