MZMORALE ZEROthe antithesis of employee engagement
DIRECTIVE 014 / CONTROL

STANDARDIZE THE WORK

If good judgment varies by employee, remove the judgment.

Convert local discretion into templates, scripts, approval paths and mandatory workflows. Measure adherence closely. Preserve exceptions for senior decision-makers who require flexibility to manage the complexity created by everyone else's standardization.

Primary: CONTROLGROWTHPOWER
RATIONALE
Consistency improves dramatically when the people closest to the work are prevented from adapting it.
SUCCESS INDICATOR
Process variance falls, approval traffic rises and experienced employees learn that expertise is safest when expressed inside the form.
COMMON FAILURE
Separating genuinely safety-critical standardization from areas where autonomy, task knowledge and local adaptation improve the work.
STATUS
Canonical / approved

Reconstructed Handbook series.

THE UNFORTUNATE PART

Unfortunately, the research…

Claim

Autonomy is a central job characteristic in classic work-design research, and job-resources models treat control and related resources as relevant to motivation and well-being. Standardization can be useful, but removing discretion changes the resource structure of the job.

Evidence

Job-characteristics research links autonomy with experienced responsibility and internal motivation. The Job Demands–Resources model likewise treats job resources as important to motivation and strain, with effects that depend on the broader demand-resource balance.

Strength: Strong

Sources

The Directive is satire. The research summary is not. Evidence is stated separately and qualified to the underlying literature rather than treated as proof of the joke.

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