3 Standards

3 Standards from renowned leadership thinker Fred Kofman, as told by tech leader extraordinaire Mike Gamson, is our favourite framework for leaders to instill specific practices into a company’s culture.

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What’s 3 Standards?

Created by management thinker Fred Kofman and championed by SVP of Sales Mike Gamson throughout LinkedIn for many years, 3 Standards provides a clear 3-step approach to instill a new practice into our team or company’s culture:

WE SET THE STANDARD: we define the behaviour we want our team to adopt. This could be how we prioritize our time and resources, it could be how we communicate, it could be how we show up for one another and follow through on our commitments.

WE DEMONSTRATE THE STANDARD: we as leaders need to manifest the explicit things that we’re asking of others. To walk the walk and lead by example to show we’re serious.

WE HOLD OTHERS ACCOUNTABLE FOR THE STANDARD: we recognize others for walking the walk or address behaviours that don’t align with the expectations we’ve set.

As Mike shares in the video, early in his tenure as a sales leader at LinkedIn, he made the difficult decision to part ways with a top-performing sales executive. Despite consistently exceeding revenue targets, this leader's approach undermined the how they treated others that Mike had established as non-negotiable for his team. This example demonstrates what “non-negotiable” really means - even exceptional results don't justify compromising our core standards, and we as leaders must be prepared to make tough decisions to uphold them.

When to use 3 Standards?

3 Standards is about instilling practices into our team or company’s culture. Therefore, here are a few examples, all focused on different aspects of organizational culture.

Meeting culture: setting standards around preparation, punctuality, and participation.
Feedback practices: outlining how and when we expect to offer and receive input.
Collaboration: defining norms across channels, response times, and tone.
Scaling decision-making: documenting who & how we make decisions; perhaps with RAPID.

To pick a real example that blends 1, 2, and 3 above, a leader might:

SET the standard that feedback is expected to be given within 24 hours of key presentations
DEMONSTRATE this by consistently providing timely and constructive feedback themselves
Hold others ACCOUNTABLE by recognizing those who follow this practice and coaching those who don’t

Overall, 3 Standards is helpful whenever we want to take something from implicit to explicit: every company has unwritten rules, but if we have a practice or expectation that we want others to follow - including newbies - then getting explicit is key.

How do we use 3 Standards?

John:

James:

John:

Something about following your offsite earlier this year when you were fairly early into your role

James:

My favourite part of 3 Standards is how much it connects back to several of the other Blueprints we’ve published:

The best way to Set the Standard is to write it down and then to share it over and over again, David Gergening The Message: we’re sharing the standards so often that we’re sick of saying it; only then it it fully sinking in and others will follow it.
Both Mike Derezin’s 5 Step Reinforcement and The Support Continuum are helpful if instilling the new practice is going to require more meaningful change management.
Finally, defining This Meeting Will Be Successful If to begin meetings is a practice I adopt everywhere I work, with the added benefit that it often gets adopted organically without top-down pressure required because it’s so simple and makes so much sense.

John:

James:

Want to learn more

WANT TO GO DEEPER ON 3 STANDARDS AND RELATED FRED KOFMAN FRAMEWORKS?

Fred has published on this exact 3 Standards topic - simplifying it to Define > Demonstrate > Demand - across these 2 articles:

The Right Culture For Your Team in 3 Easy Steps (3.3)

Culture eats strategy for lunch, claimed Peter Drucker. Like the proverbial drunk searching for his keys under the light—rather than in the dark place where he dropped them—most managers search for business success under their strategy rather than in their culture.

www.linkedin.com

The Right Culture For Your Team in 3 Easy Steps (3.3)

Setting The Culture Is Not Enough, You Have To Make It Go Viral (3.4)

How did the programmer die in the shower? He read the shampoo bottle instructions: Lather. Rinse.

www.linkedin.com

Setting The Culture Is Not Enough, You Have To Make It Go Viral (3.4)

For LinkedIn Learning subscribers, Fred has 4 courses; here are 2 we especially recommend:

Fred Kofman on Managing Conflict | LinkedIn Learning, formerly Lynda.com

Do you dread difficult conversations? Avoiding conflict doesn't save relationships. Managing conflict makes them stronger. Learn the tools that turn conflicts into positive outcomes in this workshop-style course with philosopher of leadership and LinkedIn Influencer Fred Kofman. He takes a real-life story of conflict and shows how careful listening, negotiation, and commitment can turn opponents into allies and create a renewed shared purpose.<br><br> This course is the first in a series with LinkedIn Influencers, a select group of highly influential entrepreneurs, creative thinkers, global leaders, and policy makers chosen to share their thoughts with LinkedIn members. Keep the conversation going. Share these ideas with your own friends and followers.

www.linkedin.com

Fred Kofman on Managing Conflict | LinkedIn Learning, formerly Lynda.com

Fred Kofman on Accountability | LinkedIn Learning, formerly Lynda.com

In business, most work is done collaboratively. Key to this is the need to hold each other accountable so we can all succeed in our goals. But how does one hold direct reports, colleagues, or even bosses accountable? Since 1990, <em>Conscious Business</em> creator and LinkedIn Influencer Fred Kofman has been helping employees work together more effectively. In this course, he explains how to maximize team accountability and set up commitments so there is an understood process and outcome in place. He shows how to make clear requests and hold people accountable for what they say, and he explains how to recover and rebuild trust when things go awry. Each lesson is given practical context, as Fred coaches a web designer, Jonathan, through a difficult working relationship with his co-designer on a high-profile project.

www.linkedin.com

Fred Kofman on Accountability | LinkedIn Learning, formerly Lynda.com

Finally, here is James’s favourite ever business book, Conscious Business, with lessons that extend well beyond just the professional realm:

Conscious Business: How to Build Value through Values

Conscious Business: How to Build Value through Values - Kindle edition by Kofman, Fred, Ph.D., Wilber, Ken, Senge, Peter. Download it once and read it on your Kindle device, PC, phones or tablets. Use features like bookmarks, note taking and highlighting while reading Conscious Business: How to Build Value through Values.

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Conscious Business: How to Build Value through Values

WANT TO GO DEEPER WITH MIKE GAMSON?

Across his various executive role, Mike’s LinkedIn headline has always been “Passionate about investing in People.” To share what he’s learned, he’s published ~25 articles over the years here; a few favourites we’d especially recommend:

A big idea from our son's second grade teacher

I’m a big believer in what the concept of a “Growth Mindset” can do for individuals, teams, and large organizations. It is a subject that has received extensive coverage from some of the most influential people in the world and has been analyzed and interpreted in countless ways since Carol Dweck br

www.linkedin.com

A big idea from our son's second grade teacher

I Care About Diversity Because Diverse Teams Win

I’ve always thought of myself as a fairly self-aware guy, but one day a few years back, I was asked a question that forced me to confront a hard truth that I had completely missed. It was halfway through our annual global sales kickoff, and a woman on my team pulled me aside to ask if I had noticed

www.linkedin.com

I Care About Diversity Because Diverse Teams Win

My Promise to You (Our Employees)

On average, an American professional changes jobs 11 times in their career. In the United States as in many other countries around the world, the idea that we will work at one company for our entire lives has been dead for a long time.

www.linkedin.com

Finally, at the risk of embarrassing Mike, James wrote a long-form article about what he most appreciates about him as a colleague and leader:

Colleagues I Value: Mike Gamson

My first meeting teed up much of what I’d learn from and appreciate about Mike for the next 10+ years. In late 2009, Mike Gamson interviewed me in a conference room on the ground floor of LinkedIn’s Building 2027 in Mountain View (any LinkedIn OG will remember the building well).

www.linkedin.com