Standard sounds generous. Reduce confusion, increase shared knowledge. Everyone aligned.

It also does the heavy lifting. You don’t have to restrict. You don’t have to mandate. You standardize. It sounds like an agreement even when no one agreed. It enforces, without anyone having to enforce.

Once a standard is set, people pay the tax by working around constraints that weren’t meant for them or their work. They abandon better approaches because they’re not blessed. People stop asking what fits and start asking what’s allowed.

Even if no one wants to slow things down, every standard becomes someone else’s obstacle. Every simplification becomes someone else’s problem to be solved quietly.

Empowerment means more options. Trusting people to choose. Allowing the best practices to emerge on their own. But options are messy. Options don’t look like leadership.

So we standardize instead.