Quality Matching stagnation or rising tides

In engineering, progress isn’t just about individual excellence—it’s about the quality we choose to match against. Richard Rumelt’s concept of Quality Matching in Chain Link Systems(/posts/chain-link-systems) reminds us that systems, and the teams that build them, tend to reflect the standards around them.

Highly productive engineering groups don’t just work hard—they set their expectations against the highest-functioning systems they encounter. But here’s the challenge: that benchmark is only as high as the weakest link.

As engineering leaders, we have an opportunity—and a responsibility—to elevate that bar. Raising the quality of work across an organization isn’t just about making direct changes in every system or owning every architectural decision. The impact of Principal Engineers comes from leading by example, setting high standards, and being selective in the initiatives we champion—because those choices shape what others see, adopt, and mirror.

Quality isn’t enforced; it’s modeled. The question isn’t just what are we building?—it’s what standard are we setting?