A rose is a rose is a rose. A foot in Portland, OR is a foot in Portland, ME. This common set of measurement standards is useful in everything from recipes to building construction. So, when and why is uniform standardization a good idea?
When start up companies start, the president may also be in charge of everything from building the website to mailing packages to collecting accounts receivable. Companies rely on their institutional memory - we do things the way we've always done them, and if you have a question about that process, feel free to ask your neighbor. As companies evolve, employees need to standardize and document exactly as much information as will be used again, no more, no less.
Documentation can run out of control. If a process is likely to only be repeated once by the same user, or not at all, documentation is unnecessary. A speech written by its deliverer doesn't need stage notes. Companies trying to track down every process and generate report after report after report can find their production grinding to a halt.
How is your end user going to interact with your information? Do you have a strong sense of who your end user actually is? If not, or if you want to check, ask another department in the company who you interact with how they need the information presented. I like standardized abbreviations in marketing material I'm trying to find. When the word international is sometimes written out in full, sometimes written int, sometimes written intl and sometimes written int'l, it can be easy to think a piece is missing or was never created. When your company is 25 people with low turnover, it's easier to learn any system and stick to it. When your company is 25,000 people with high turnover, a non-intuitive system can create a significant source of mistakes and frustration.
How far does this go? Teachers rebelling against the No Child Left Behind Act claimed it neutered their ability to teach the material and forced them to "teach to the test." Children's education has huge variability depending on the wealth of the district, the involvement of the parents, the quality of the teachers the district is able to attract. Standards are good, so how do you account for variability when you can't control the input? Companies can hire the people they want and fire the ones they don't. To a large degree, schools don't have that option.
A solution: require all Master's of Education candidates to meet KIPP standards for teaching, and integrate the program into America's schools over a 5 year period. KIPP (Knowledge is Power Program) is a national network of free, open-enrollment, college-preparatory public schools with a track record of preparing students in under served communities for success in college and in life. There are currently 82 KIPP schools in 19 states and the District of Columbia serving around 20,000 students (from their website, July 2009). Their program is rigorous, requiring attendance from 7:30 am to 5:30 pm, with hours of homework afterward and significantly shorter breaks and days off. Their mandatory curriculum includes music and foreign languages. And their results are impressive: teachers and administrators are lined up to teach and start new schools, and although they serve primarily at risk communities, they proudly boast 25 to 100% better results in math and reading. In many cases, their graduates are the first member of their family to go to college.
Back to standardization. Where does the funding come from? KIPP, while an important movement and one I fully expect to continue to grow in the following years, serves only 20,000 students. If that number grew to 2,000,000 students, funding options for the independent schools would be vastly lacking and space for students would be even more of a premium.
The only solution is to make KIPP, which already seems to have figured out the answer, the new standard and for government to get out of the way. If we removed teacher tenure and the vacation schedule and raised the pay to the demands of the job we now require them to do, every school could be a KIPP school and America could take her place as the world's foremost intellectual leader.
Standardization is good, but only by standardizing at the highest level and not the lowest.