Insist on the Highest Standards

Leaders have relentlessly high standards and always keep safety front and center. Many people may think these standards are unreasonably high. Leaders are continually raising the bar and driving their teams to hire great people and produce high-quality products, services, and processes.

Back to the universal principles

Calibration

Under, just right, over.

Situation	Under	Just Right	Over
Handing work to the next team	Sends the work with known gaps and lets the next team find them.	Fixes the issues that would become someone else's defects, and names what is still open. Leaves polish that would delay the handoff more than it helps.	Holds the work until every edge case is clean. The next team waits and the shared date moves.
The same bug comes back	Applies last week's patch again and closes the ticket.	Fixes the symptom and changes the check or step that let it through, even if that costs another day this week.	Stops the team's other work to redesign around one returning bug. Commitments for the rest of the week slip.
Reviewing a teammate's draft	Skims and approves so the author can stay on the calendar.	Calls out the few places that would actually lower the bar, and says why. Leaves wording nits that do not change the outcome.	Rewrites the draft in their own voice. The author stops owning it, and the draft sits in review for the rest of the week.
The team says the bar is too high	Drops the standard so the argument ends.	Keeps the parts a customer would notice, and cuts scope or sequence so the team can still hit that bar this week.	Treats every objection as a lack of will and refuses to cut anything. People work late and the work still ships late.
Closing a ticket	Marks it done while a known defect is still in it for the next person to find.	Fixes what would travel downstream, writes down the leftover risk, and only then closes it.	Leaves the ticket open for cosmetic leftovers no customer will see. The board fills with work that is already good enough.
A new person ships their first work	Lets them send it out without showing what done looks like on this team.	Walks through one recent example of the standard and reviews their first piece against it, while still letting them finish the week.	Makes them redo the first task until it matches a senior's taste in every detail. They lose the week and still cannot tell which parts matter.
A partner team's deliverable is rough	Takes it as-is to keep the relationship easy.	Sends it back with the specific gaps that would turn into defects here, and a way to land it this week.	Rejects the whole deliverable and rebuilds it themselves. The partner stops trying, and this team now owns the partner's work.
A process already works but creates rework	Leaves the clumsy step alone because it has not failed loudly this week.	Tightens the one step that keeps producing rework, and leaves the rest until that change sticks.	Redesigns the whole process in the same week. People spend their time learning new steps instead of doing the work.
A shortcut that touches a hazard	Takes the shortcut and leaves the hazard on someone else's checklist.	Names the hazard, refuses the shortcut, and escalates until a real owner has the risk.	Blocks every shortcut nearby, including ones that do not touch the hazard, and the work stops for no safety gain.
Schedule pressure on a safety check	Moves the check to after the date so the milestone still holds.	Keeps the check in front of the date, and holds the work if the check is not done.	Adds extra checks that do not cover the hazard, and the date slips with no safety gain.
A known risk about to go forward	Sends the work and plans to catch the risk later.	Holds that work until the risk is mitigated or explicitly accepted by the person who can accept it.	Holds unrelated work that has no named hazard, and calls the hold safety.
Cost pressure on a safety step	Cuts the step to save the cost and does not say what hazard that step covered.	Keeps the step when it is what makes the work safe, and looks for a cheaper way that still covers the same hazard.	Refuses every cheaper option, even one that covers the same hazard, and the cost becomes the reason nothing ships.
Someone else's checklist	Assumes the checklist owner will catch it, and does not look at the item their own work can make unsafe.	Checks the items their work can make unsafe, and leaves the rest with the owner.	Takes over the whole checklist and becomes the bottleneck for work they do not understand.
A hazard with no name	Says it feels unsafe and stops, without saying what could hurt someone.	Names the hazard, the consequence, and the smallest hold that covers it.	Keeps the hold after the hazard is named and covered, because stopping felt safer than deciding.
Skipping a safety step for convenience	Skips the step because it is inconvenient and the last few times were fine.	Does the step when skipping it would put a person or the hardware at risk, and drops a step that no longer covers a real hazard.	Keeps every old step, including ones that no longer match the hardware, and the team works around them.
Escalating a real risk	Mentions the risk once and goes back to the schedule.	Escalates until the risk has an owner and a next step, then returns to the work that is still safe to do.	Escalates every discomfort as a stop, and the people who own the real risks stop listening.

Sources and essays on this principle.

Blue Origin Work Culture
The published wording of this principle.
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About Blue Origin
The mission this principle is meant to serve.
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