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Consider a rule that every comp over a threshold is logged with a reason. In one venue this is uncontroversial within a fortnight. In another it produces resentment, quiet non compliance and an argument about trust.
Same rule, opposite outcomes. Three differences usually explain it.
1. Does it apply to everyone
The fastest way to poison a standard is to enforce it unevenly. If the long serving bartender is not asked to log comps and the new starter is, the rule is no longer about comps. It is about status, and everyone can see that.
This happens without anyone deciding it. Enforcement follows the path of least resistance, and the path of least resistance is to ask the person least likely to push back.
2. Can the team see the state of it
A standard checked privately by a manager is indistinguishable, from the outside, from a manager building a case. Nobody knows where they stand, so everyone assumes the worst about how they are perceived.
The same figures on the wall change the character of the thing entirely. Now it is a shared number that the team can act on without being told to. This costs nothing and is skipped constantly, usually out of a well meant instinct to protect people from comparison.
3. Is the reason given once, properly
A standard introduced without a reason is experienced as arbitrary, and arbitrary rules are complied with exactly as far as they are enforced.
The reason has to be about the work, not about the owner's margin. Comps get logged because the pattern tells us where service is failing, and it usually turns out to be a service problem rather than a generosity problem. That is true, it is more interesting than a cost argument, and it makes the team a participant rather than a subject.
What chasing costs
The alternative to a fair visible standard is not the absence of accountability. It is chasing: individual conversations, reminders, escalating irritation.
Chasing has three costs that a standard does not. It consumes the manager's time in proportion to the size of the team. It is experienced as personal because it is literally directed at a person. And it is inconsistent by nature, because it depends on the manager having the energy on the day, which means the team cannot predict it.
A venue that chases has accountability that varies with a manager's mood. That is worse than no standard at all, because it is unpredictable rather than merely absent.
The practical version
Pick one standard. State it and the reason once. Apply it to everyone including the people it is awkward to apply it to, especially them. Make the current state visible. Look at it weekly, briefly, as a number rather than as a list of names.
Then leave it alone long enough to work. The most common mistake after introducing a standard is adding a second one before the first has become routine, which converts a manageable change into a wave of new rules and gets the whole thing rejected.
Where the information sits
All of this rests on the check being cheap and consistent. A standard verified only when a manager has time is a standard applied unevenly, which is the first failure mode above.
That is the practical case for having the figures arrive on their own rather than being assembled: not the sophistication of the analysis, but the consistency of the check. CoreTAP routes the action and records the outcome, which is what makes a weekly look cost minutes instead of an afternoon.