Back when I co-owned a real estate company, we used to talk about our employees earning a profit-sharing bonus. It was the carrot that helped drive performance. For reasons beyond the scope of this article, we never actually capitalized on it. That's a story for another day.

But I was the systems-and-processes guy at the company, and took the initiative to build out the model for what that profit-sharing bonus would have looked like, had we earned it. That model, and the belief it forced us to abandon, is the actual subject of this post.

Verbal Expectations Are Not Standards

Most leaders believe verbal expectations are good enough. They'll say the standards out loud in a meeting, mention them again in a one-on-one, and assume they've been internalized. That may feel efficient, but it's setting you and your team up for failure.

A written standard doesn't have that problem. It's the same for everyone, every time, whether the leader is in the room or not.

What We Actually Built

The model I built had multiple facets, each weighted differently, and every single one of them was based on how well our sales teams executed against a specific, written standard. Nothing verbal. Nothing left to interpretation.

One measurement was how often a customer left us a five-star review on Google. Another was how quickly a home sold after it hit the market. To earn the maximum share in any given category, a team had to hit a specific, published number. Not "do well." A number.

Why Writing It Down Changed Everything

The team knew exactly what the standards were, and they focused on them heavily, because we'd written them down. That's the whole mechanism. Nobody was guessing what "good performance" meant that week. It was on the page, the same for every person, every deal, every time.

This is what actually drove performance throughout the organization. Not motivation. Not a pep talk. A written, weighted, specific standard that everyone could see and measure themselves against without needing me in the room to interpret it for them. A standard not written down is not a standard. It's a suggestion, and everyone treats it like one.

Part of the Reason Revenue Grew 7X

That model is part of the reason we grew from $800K to nearly $6M in annual revenue over four years. Not the whole reason. But a real, measurable piece of it, because a team chasing a specific, written standard outperforms a team chasing something vague, every single time.

That's the uncomfortable irony in this story. The bonus tied to that model was never actually paid. But the model itself, the discipline of writing the standard down instead of just talking about it, is part of what generated the growth that made a bonus conversation possible in the first place.

Why Determined Leaders Don't Settle for Verbal

There's no ceiling on what a team can hit against a standard they can actually see. The limiting belief isn't the team's capability. It's the leader's assumption that saying something out loud once is the same as making it real and measurable for everyone chasing it.

Writing a standard down forces a leader to actually define it precisely enough to write, which is a discipline in itself. You can't write "sell houses fast." You have to write the actual number of days. That precision is uncomfortable, and it's exactly why so many leaders skip it and settle for the verbal version instead.

The Same Discipline That Shows Up Everywhere Else

This connects to the same self-discipline that shows up in every other form of leadership. Writing the standard down is harder than just saying it. It's also the only version of it that actually changes behavior at scale.

A verbal standard can flex depending on who's asking. A written one can't. That rigidity isn't a weakness. It's the entire point.

Marching Orders

Take one standard you've only ever said out loud to your team, and write it down. Give it a real number, not a feeling. Publish it somewhere everyone can see it. If you want to get sharper on which standards you're actually holding versus just saying, take the free 3-minute leadership assessment. Your mission starts here.