Principles

When going through life, each person acts and decides in a certain way. And why someone decides one way instead of another is defined by their Principles. In a way Principles are the key rules of the Human internal “operating system”.

And the same happens for organized collections of people, big or small: companies, countries, religion, sport clubs, boy scouts, etc. Decisions and the direction of the collective is decided by the organization’s key Principles.

Principles define how to act given each specific situation.

Why pay attention?

How many of the actions you do are commanded by Principles that you’ve reasoned extensively about, versus because it’s how everybody else does it?

The “everybody else does it” Principles are great that exist, but who guarantees these are the best for your situation? They might be rooted in principles generated from outdated historical events, or worse, they might originate from influence tactics from a 3rd party for their own gain/benefit.

Getting aware of the underlying Principles in play (both at a personal level as well at an organizational level), surfaces questions like:

I acted this way, do I really think this is the right thing to do, and why?

Am I responsibly following my ideals/values or am I following a set of pre-packed principles from my environment?

Again, nothing wrong in following a pre-packed set of principles, but do question: “Are they working for me? Is this what I really want and care about?” (sometimes these are key to limit 3rd party influence tactics).

How to find them

Defining them helps solidify what one stands for, actively question What values do I care for more deeply? Am I acting accordingly?

And they often surface from experience, little nuggets of learning from being exposed to situations that need an answer.

Both Personal and Work environments deserve its own set of principles.

Personal example:

“I want you to work for yourself, to come up with independent opinions, to stress-test them, to be wary about being overconfident, and to reflect on the consequences of your decisions and constantly improve.”

Work example:

• Trust in Truth
• Create a Culture in Which It Is OK to Make Mistakes but Unacceptable Not to Identify, Analyze, and Learn From Them
• Manage as Someone Who Is Designing and Operating a Machine to Achieve the Goal
• Evaluate People Accurately, Not “Kindly”
• Put Things in Perspective
• Meritocracy trumps Democracy
• Etc…

Not only for playing defense

Well-developed principles serve not only for making a decision that you might be faced with in a day-to-day situation, but also for driving longer term plans and being pro-active in staying ahead of the curve.

See that once you’ve settled on the Principles you can then start plan how to be in a situation that fits your principles instead of being dragged by chance into different situations.

For example, the “working for yourself” principle requires a type of planning ahead that is different for a “working for others” principle.

References

• https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12935037-principles