Joe has walked many CEOs through implementing principles and identifies the critical steps where most fail. The process that works: executives independently develop five principles each, present them (almost always converging), then experiment for a month — one principle per day, sharing results in a shared channel. The CEO makes final definitions based on experiments, then the whole company experiments and iterates.
What kills the process: top-down mandates (“here are the principles”), no experimentation, assigned rather than volunteered implementation tasks, and adding principles on top of existing meaningless mission statements and values — creating signal-to-noise confusion. Every person in the company must find and commit to one self-chosen way of embedding the principles (bathroom signs, review process changes, emoji shorthand, sales pipeline adjustments).
When it works, principles become decision-making shorthand: “What does this principle say we should do?” and everyone acts. It saves enormous time on the back end despite the upfront investment.
“Top down — here are the principles, somebody goes out into a room and says ‘these are the principles’ — none of that works.”
“Everybody in the company is responsible for finding and committing to one way of reminding everybody to live by the principles.”
Related Concepts
- Wrestling with principles matters more than the principles
- Transparency is the antidote to politics
- Goals and culture are experiments not mandates