Companies have principles. Implicit or explicit, good or bad, they exist whether you want them to or not.
The principles come from the people, starting with the founders. What they embody, what they reward, and what they hold up as ideal will become company principles more than what’s written in a list or put on a poster in the lunch room.
The power of language should never be underestimated. The words used to highlight these embodied principles matter. A lot. So does the frequency and media used to do so.
Company principles are the kind of things that everyone on the team knows as phrases and quips always used in convos, slack channels, etc. The kind of thing you almost get tired of hearing, but you know isn’t phony because you also see it play out.
Explicitly putting these principles into words, pointing out when people embody them, and reflecting on them in memos and messages is a good practice. (As long as it’s not phony or done out of fear, panic, or damage control mode.)
I try to do this somewhat regularly in order to point to the standard. Publicly acknowledging who we are as a company helps me hold myself to the standard.
An example of a company principle I love and state frequently is, “I did” is better than “we should”.
Another is, Learn out loud.
Another is, Make them famous. (them being customers, partners, users, fans).
Here’s a slack post to the team yesterday about some other company principles:
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Openness, generosity, abundance, and joy.
Those don’t sound like business principles, but they are. They are cornerstones, and allow for genuine growth and success.
If we approach our work and our market and our content and our events in a tight-fisted way, always ensuring we get enough credit, we will miss opportunity.
If we spend energy being threatened by what others do, we lose energy that could be spent doing something great ourselves.
We must always maintain a posture of openness, genuine joy at the success of others, a non-threatened demeanor, and a sense of playfulness and fun.
The day we get pulled into the muck of gossip and infighting, angling and posturing, fear and threat is the day we stop having fun. The day we stop having fun is the day we stop being fun. The day we stop being fun is the day we stop growing. The day we stop growing is the day we rot.
Above the fray is the only way!
I’m beyond delighted that this is our norm, our culture, and our default posture. Let’s always lean into that.