I believe management has to fight to maintain standards every day.  If a standard is not qualifiable (what you are supposed to do), quantifiable (when or how often you are supposed to do it), and verifiable (management can check to make sure it was done), it is not a standard.  What are yours?  And how are you communicating them?  If employees don't know what you want and expect, they aren't going to deliver.  I say it again: If standards are not being met, do not blame your employees or the economy.  Blame management.

- Jon Taffer, Raise the Bar

It's not a secret that businesses of all types require solid standards to succeed.  What is a mystery, however, is why so many businesses are not delivering on their standards.  Jon Taffer suggests that we often look outside ourselves to understand why our standards are not being met; however, the issue is usually the people who set the standards in the first place.  

To fix the situation, we have to review ourselves - have we not set standards that are clear?  Have we not made it apparent exactly when each standard is applicable?  Have we not made our standards things that can be measured or observed?  What about teaching our standards to our employees - have we not spent enough time on this aspect?  What questions or concerns do our employees have about the standards?  Have we considered if the standards themselves are wrong?  Are lower-level employees not following the standards because upper-level employees aren't, either?  And if all that fails, have we considered that perhaps we're asking the wrong employees to follow the standards - have we hired incorrectly?  Consider all of the above and realize that ultimately, the responsibility for the standards comes back to us.  This can be intimidating, but the good news is it means we also have the power to make things right.