Analogy to help potential clients understand this principle

You start a new job, and on the first day you drive to work. It may not be the most efficient route, but you get there. The next day, you take a different route to work, and again you get there, although it would have taken you a varying amount of time. (If you don’t have standards in place, your working environment would be like driving to work a number of different ways every day).

After a couple of weeks, you identify the quickest way to drive to work and make that your standard route every day. This is why when you try and deviate from your standard, it always takes you longer!(This would be like highlighting the quickest approach to carry out a process at work, and using this process route every time, thus creating your standard).

After 6 months of driving to work using your standard route, you start to identify improvement opportunities to get you to work quicker. E.G. 1) If you stay in the left hand lane at a roundabout, you can miss out a minutes worth of traffic. E.G. 2) If you rushed from 1 set of traffic lights to the next, you can beat the next set before they turn red.(Now you have your standard way of working, improvement opportunities that were not previously visible, become viable money saving, cost cutting sustainable improvement opportunities to create an improved standard).