First things first, guiding principles are central to having an agile strategy. So when we say guiding principles, another way to think about the topic is guidelines for decision-making for your team.
Establishing strong guiding principles is crucial for uniting teams behind a shared purpose and values. As a leader, facilitating the process to define and integrate meaningful guiding principles can transform organizational culture. Follow these steps:
Educate on Guiding Principles
Start by ensuring managers and employees understand the concept and benefits of guiding principles. Explain that these are the core values and behaviors which guide all decision-making and actions. Highlight companies known for effective principles. Build buy-in by discussing:
- How principles increase focus and alignment
- How principles help teams resolve conflicts or make tough calls
- How principles foster empowerment over micromanaging policies
- How principles attract talent who share your values
- How principles reinforce culture and create legacy
Identify Desired Behaviors
Conduct organization-wide surveys focus groups and workshops to identify current behaviors employees want to preserve or maximize. What actions and mindsets makes your culture unique? What principles motivate staff and reflect your brand? Compile feedback into common themes of top desired behaviors.
Identify Unwanted Behaviors
Use similar outreach to pinpoint negative behaviors your organization seeks to minimize or eliminate What attitudes or actions detract from performance and culture? What ethical issues exist to address? Look for patterns where principles could overcome common problems,
Distill Core Values
Analyze the desired and undesired behavior themes to derive a shortlist of 4-8 core values. These should capture broad ideals that will resonate across the organization and stand the test of time. Example values include integrity, excellence, collaboration, accountability, sustainability.
Draft Guiding Principles
Transform your core values into memorable guiding principles. For each value, provide 2-3 specific statements on expected behaviors, decisions and interactions to make that value come to life. For instance:
Integrity
- We are open and honest in all internal and external communication
- We take responsibility for our actions rather than blaming others
- We escalate ethical concerns promptly for review and resolution
Perform Quality Checks
Before finalizing the principles, solicit constructive feedback through:
- Leadership team reviews to align on wording
- Town halls for employees to react and improve phrasing
- External audits by trusted advisors to identify gaps
- Surveys to quantify employee alignment and sentiment
Refine the principles based on this input to maximize clarity and buy-in.
Develop the Transformation Plan
Create a multi-faceted plan for ingraining the principles across your organization. This should include:
- High visibility communications from executives
- Training programs on applying the principles
- Integration into hiring practices and performance management
- Updates to policies, processes and language to reflect the principles
- Storytelling, events and rewards to reinforce the principles
- Ongoing surveys to benchmark adoption
- Commitments from leaders to regularly discuss and demonstrate the principles
Keys to Driving Adoption and Accountability
Do not underestimate the effort required to fully integrate guiding principles. It takes consistent commitment from leaders across the organization to make principles a living part of your culture. Use these adoption best practices:
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Weave into operations – Reference principles in meetings, reviews, discussions and communications.
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Model desired behaviors – Leaders must visibly exemplify the principles in their words and actions.
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Reinforce continually – Look for ways big and small to keep principles top of mind through office décor, branded merchandise, celebrations when principles are exhibited, and consequences when they are violated.
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Share examples – Let teams know when principles guide key decisions and outcomes so all see their impact.
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Measure consistently – Track awareness, understanding and adoption through pulse surveys and other metrics.
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Update periodically – Revalidate principles or refine wording to keep them fresh and relevant.
Benefits of Strong Guiding Principles
Developing and integrating high-quality guiding principles provides many advantages, including:
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Strategic clarity – Principles determine what initiatives and actions get priority in situations where trade-offs must be made.
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Decision efficiency – Principles guide leaders to faster, aligned choices using shared standards rather than weighed debate on every issue.
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Trust and empowerment – With shared principles as guideposts, management can entrust employees to make more discretionary choices independently.
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Motivation and commitment – Principles give employees a cause and culture beyond financial incentives to rally behind.
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Risk reduction – Principles identify red lines not to cross on ethics, safety, compliance and other dangers.
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Brand building – Principles like sustainability and community give customers and partners something to admire in your organization.
Pulling Guidelines Out of Your Strategic Planning Process
One way to address this issue is by having an agreed-upon set of guidelines or guiding principles that help keep your strategy alive and agile. Guiding principles are not values, as values are behaviors. And they’re not actions. They’re guidelines that help decision-making. They address the challenge. And the most important thing, if you sit down with your executive team and you say, “Let’s develop some guiding principles,” it’s never going to work. Listen for the guiding principles that will inherently come out of your planning process. Just pay attention and keep a list of guiding principles running on the side.
Here is a stem completion that will help you know whether you have a guiding principle instead of a value or an action: “We will…” So, to put this to work, define your problem or your challenge. Any great strategic plan has a mega challenge or problem or maybe mega opportunity to solve. So, in this case, a simple one might be, “How do we maintain profitable growth?” And to do that, what will our “We will” statement be? When creating your guiding principles, keep them to less than half a dozen statements that will be targeted on solving this problem.
How to Keep Focus with Your Guiding Principles
Oftentimes, the minute that the “ink” is dry on a strategic plan, there’s a new opportunity, a new dynamic, a new something that’s going to come out of left field that’s going to upset the focus that you’ve created in your strategic plan. So, what do you do about that?
How to Develop Guiding Principles
How do you create guiding principles?
Step 1. Articulate the Values To create your guiding principles, you must have already identified your top 3-5 core values. These are the values you believe will drive the behaviors needed to achieve the outcomes of the business. Click here for tips on developing team values. Please don’t just develop the values and then leave them on the wall.
What are some examples of guiding principles?
Here are 20 examples of guiding principles to help you establish fundamental values for your company: 1. Emphasizing quality Emphasizing quality within your company encourages professionals to create work that exceeds expectations. Adopting this principle can improve your company’s reputation by ensuring that employees produce high-quality work.
How do you facilitate guiding principles in the workplace?
To facilitate guiding principles in the workplace, it’s first necessary for you to create a set of core values or review the existing values that function as the guiding beliefs for the company in which you work.
Why are guiding principles important?
Besides demonstrating a company’s mission and values to customers, guiding principles help create a consistent work environment and cohesive expectations for employees, which may improve their job satisfaction and overall performance.
