I was at the veterinarian’s office the other day and I noticed a chart on the wall. It was a “Cat Pain Scale Rubric”, where you look at things like their eyes, ears, whiskers, tail, and shoulders, and based upon an eye chart assign a point score, then add the whole score up to determine “how much pain the cat is in”.

It’s fascinating to me how reliant we are becoming, and how much we are choosing to embrace, everything being systematic, process based, and rubric based. There are a lot of pros and cons I see to this.

So the obvious con is the lack of flexibility and tailoring that this gives to people. Imagine trying to paint a wall and being told, “the process requires rollers only”, so you’re not able to use a paintbrush for touch-up work. Yes, you get consistency in the process, but you also has some impact on quality.

BUT…(and this is a big but)…

The quality bump can only happen if the person has the skills and experience to make that tailoring adjustment decision. If you’re not a very good painter, then using a brush instead of a roller might actually make things worse. You have to know when to use the brush instead of the roller, and not everyone has that training.

And that’s the pro. By systemizing everything, you can push it to scale while saving training and talent costs.

There are certain places that this system-vs-experience decision has huge impacts.

• An artist making a custom painting, vs a set of artists trying to make 900 paintings to deliver to a hotel chain for the lobbies.
• A chef preparing a high end meal, vs a team trying to make 900 meals as fast as possible for an event.
• Someone hand-building a high-end gaming PC, vs trying to get 900 PCs put together for a company.

So the issue is, those 900 meals will probably not be as good as the chef-prepared meal, but ONLY if the chef is really good. And the hard part is finding, hiring, and training said chef. So you as a business leader have to recognize when to take the systemic approach versus when to take the tailored approach, weighing in all these pros and cons against your requirements, desired outcomes, and time and resources available to you.