In 35+ years of building companies and organizations in multiple industries, I’ve concluded most leadership books are great examples of survivorship bias. I’ve learned a lot from many of these books. But none of them really clued me into the secret of what distinguishes teams that consistently deliver outsized results from teams that are just mediocre.
So what’s the secret?
Principles.
Principled leaders have a set of strongly held beliefs in the how (vs the what, why, when, or who) and strive to live those principles.
Even better, organizations that have a written-down set of rules for the how, combined with mechanisms that reinforce the living of those principles, the org sings.
It doesn’t even matter what the principles are. What matters is the org is principled.
If you want your org the consistently deliver outsized results develop these skills:
- Skills for figuring out which principles are the right principles.
- Skills for writing down principles in ways that resonate and create clarity.
- Skills for creating mechanisms and plans that encourage everyone in the org to continuously work at living the principles.
- Skills for remembering that principle is spelled p-r-i-n-c-i-p-l-e and not p-r-i-n-c-i-p-a-l and the word principle is synonymous with tenet (and that is spelled t-e-n-e-t and not t-e-n-a-n-t).
I have mastered1 these skills and love teaching them to others. I’m available to help you and/or your entire organization; see www.kindel.com.
1 Sometimes I still spell tenet tenent. Oops.
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I was directed to your blog by a revered mentor, thank you for sharing your wisdom!
I was wondering about your take around what makes tenets/principles more effective from most leadership books / survival biases. It appears plausible to me, but I scratch me head about why and wonder your perspective: after all, most leadership books do introduce some sorts of principles.
In particular, was it more about the rigorous processing in generating, writing, and debating tenets? Or maybe it’s less about the tenets themselves, but rather more about whether there are mechanisms and plans that follows-up, reinforces, and revise them as the project / team goes?
Would really appreciate your thoughts, thank!
Thanks for the comment!
I think the crux is intentionality and writing things down. A lot of things can drive folks in an org to be intentional about things. It happens that principles/tenets/values are at the base of the pyramid and the more a team can be intentional about them, the bigger the leverage.
It is ABSOUTELY not about the tenets themselves, as you note. It is about GOING THROUGH THE PROCESS of creating, debating, and re-enforcing them that matters.
This is true of most things, I think. Take my Job Decision Matrix: The matrix itself has SOME value over time, but the real value is in the process of sitting down and writing your own matrix, sharing it with others, and revising it.
Or a plan. A verbalized plan is far less likely to result in a great outcome than a plan that was written down, debated, and revised.
In each of these (tenets, decision matrices, plans) the thing that differentiates excellent execution from mediocre execution is whether someone was INTENTIONAL about WRITING something down such that others could read, debate, and revise IN BLACK AND WHITE “INK”.