Why Every Company Should Have Guiding Principles
How many companies have a set of values that go along with their mission, vision, and value proposition? Most have something defined like:
- Drive for Results
- Be Accountable
- Focus on the Customer
- Deliver Value to Shareholders
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We've all worked at companies where their stated values like these were handsomely displayed on company walls, occasionally mentioned in corporate communications, and posted on the company website. That’s as far as it went. And that’s a miss opportunity for leadership and it can spell D-O-O-M for your company’s workplace health and culture.
Transform those values into living, breathing Guiding Principles and see them work for you! Translating values into Guiding Principles is giving life to a common way of thinking. It’s like values on steroids, they live and breathe as though they are separate entity at the company.
Let’s find out how.
What are Guiding Principles?
Guiding or shared principles are a unifying set of values that guide organizations in the manner in which they conduct business. They function a little like a code of conduct but provide a wide room for interpretation and application across the organization.
This is a value: “Do the right thing.”
This is a guiding principle: “Act with Integrity and in Compliance.”
“Doing the right thing” is nice, but that value doesn’t really have any teeth. If your senior leadership says,
"Always Act with Integrity and In Compliance, above all else. We should never do any business activity that would conflict with this principle.”
Now, that is a guiding principle. It’s got wings. It will manage for you when you aren’t looking.
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Click for additional Guiding Principle examples.
Culture is Why Your Talent Leaves
How many of you have left a job because of your boss? There’s that saying, “People leave bosses not jobs.” It is true. But people also leave toxic cultures. In A Toxic Work Culture Is Forcing High-Performing People to Quit, CNBC & Business Insider author Tim Denning writes,
“Toxic work cultures make going to work feel miserable.”
Amen to that. I’ve worked in jobs where I loved the boss and the team, but the overall work environment was poison. It sucks the life out of you. You want to run for the parking garage at 5pm. Forget staying late to finish the project. You want to enjoy the place where you spend more hours than any other activity.
Denning continues by saying,
“High performers quit toxic work cultures. Every day on platforms such as LinkedIn, high performers are getting messages from recruiters and competitors who are selling the dream that the grass is greener. If your company has a toxic work culture, high performers have nothing to lose by moving on and trying another company.”
Does this sound familiar? Can you relate? Weak values = toxic culture.
Sadly, this is the state of affairs for many companies. Some have no defined values or Guiding Principles at all, making operating philosophy or guidelines on how people should conduct business and treat each other non-existent.
When there aren’t any rules, work cultures can become volatile, like Lord of the Flies at the water cooler. Lacking a set of principles to guide the work and business relationships, workers, through no fault of their own, resort to whatever means necessary to get their work done. Most people tend to engage in unhealthy workplace behavior in the absence of guidance or experience in a strong values-driven culture. Your swanky open work space becomes riddled with turf wars, silos, gossip, and poor communication--a perfect recipe for high turnover, low employee engagement, and ultimately a lack of organizational agility.
Some recruiters are better than others at holding up the flimsy mirage of “A Great Place to Work.” But a savvy talent will read the ‘tea leaves’ by reviewing company reviews on Glassdoor, Indeed, and searching your company website for stated values and descriptions of the culture.
When coaching job seekers, I always tell them to ask about the company culture and values. If there aren’t any values. I say,
“If the company has no stated values or principles. Go apply somewhere else.”
“If the company has no stated values or principles. Go apply somewhere else.”
How Do I Implement Guiding Principles to Shape Culture?
How Guiding Principles are interpreted and internalized by employees requires robust communication systems and senior leadership commitment. Leaders who model them understand how their behavior can bring people together toward a common goal to advance a company’s mission and success.
Taking a leadership team through the paces to define Guiding Principles is hard work. It takes self-awareness, vision and heart. The heavy lifting comes with implementation, how do you motivate a workforce to buy into a set of guiding principle?
Leaders who say it, do and live it, change culture.
I saw this first hand when working with CEO Sean Fallmann and the leadership team at Consolidated Container Company (CCC) a few years ago. Sean brought over the Market Based Management (MBM) principles and the Guiding Principles concept from Georgia Pacific when he joined CCC in 2014.
I saw this first hand when working with CEO Sean Fallmann and the leadership team at Consolidated Container Company (CCC) a few years ago. Sean brought over the Market Based Management (MBM) principles and the Guiding Principles concept from Georgia Pacific when he joined CCC in 2014.
Over my two years there, I watched Sean promote CCC’s Guiding Principles in nearly every communication. He continually stressed the importance of having a strong, unifying culture and the vision set forth with the company’s seven Guiding Principles:
- Act with Integrity and In Compliance
- Drive Value Creation
- Be Disciplined Entrepreneurs
- Focus on the Customer
- Act with Humility
- Treat Others with Dignity and Respect
- Seek Fulfillment in Your Work (Added in 2018)
CCC’s video on the Guiding Principles is available publicly on YouTube. In the video, Sean and the other leaders provide an overview of the Guiding Principles, how it applies to their business, and some other employees also provide comment.
I play one of the extras in the purple business sweater =).
Pay close attention to the description of the tiers within the seven Guiding Principles. This is a key differentiator from company values. The tier system helps leaders and employees apply the principles to their daily interactions and work activities.
The video is about 10 minutes long, but it’s really worth it to see Sean’s vision and the power of well-crafted Guiding Principles at work.
For example, CCC’s first tier is “Act with Integrity and In Compliance.” This should always be front of mind when you conduct your business. If Driving Value Creation (tier two) conflicts with the first tier (Integrity), then you don’t do it. Period.
Inspiring Great Culture at CCC
We played this video at an all hands meeting with the company leaders and many were moved by its sincerity and authenticity. These aren’t just some values printed on a fancy poster and tucked into a slide boilerplate. Every single C suite leader at the company is in this video and we filmed most of it through December and early January. I’ve never seen a group of leaders so dedicated to this kind of project. We worked tirelessly on the video scripting and production while most people enjoyed the holiday break. How could you not be inspired yourself?
I’m very proud of the work we did together at CCC and as the Learning and Development leader there, I worked tirelessly to weave CCC’s Guiding Principles into CCC’s leadership programs and professional skills courses. Making connections to the Guiding Principles in every leadership course not only helped us make the content more meaningful and relevant, but we were giving leaders the blueprint to create healthy work environments at each individual manufacturing plant.The Guiding Principles were vital to create a cohesive connection across the company’s 60 different locations. Many of these plants were acquisitions and each had its own mini culture. I can’t see any other way to get everyone on the same page without a common set of principles like the ones adopted by CCC.
We had fun with it too. I created a learning game to help new leaders adopt the Guiding Principles and we gave out Guiding Principles stickers. It was a movement! Let Your Guiding Principles Manage for You Things weren’t always perfect at CCC like any other employer, but we all had a common code to live by. We could all look at the Guiding Principles on the wall (they were posted in every facility) and re-ground ourselves quickly.
I remember sitting in a meeting one time and a leader was being resistant to implementing a policy shift. The conversation was getting heated and then… he took a pause to reflect, and his demeanor changed. That Guiding Principle poster was on the wall. Principle number five in action: Act with Humility.
We had fun with it too. I created a learning game to help new leaders adopt the Guiding Principles and we gave out Guiding Principles stickers. It was a movement! Let Your Guiding Principles Manage for You Things weren’t always perfect at CCC like any other employer, but we all had a common code to live by. We could all look at the Guiding Principles on the wall (they were posted in every facility) and re-ground ourselves quickly.
I remember sitting in a meeting one time and a leader was being resistant to implementing a policy shift. The conversation was getting heated and then… he took a pause to reflect, and his demeanor changed. That Guiding Principle poster was on the wall. Principle number five in action: Act with Humility.
In reflecting on my days at CCC. It finally donned on me why CEO, Sean Fallmann, was so insistent on promoting them throughout the company. Well-crafted Guiding Principles can take on a life of their own. And I saw this in CCC’s people day in and day out. The employees would do the right thing when there weren’t any leaders around! It was very powerful. Values are one thing when everyone is there to see you model them, but how many people live them when no one is looking?
I remember traveling across the country delivering training sessions to plant leaders and thinking like a “Disciplined Entrepreneur” when I ordered a meal with my company credit card:
“A disciplined entrepreneur would order a chicken breast not the filet.”
Laugh if you want. But it’s like a song you can’t get out of your head. You start to live them. Everyday.
I got a dose of humility too. We were facilitating a leadership training session at a hotel and a participant asked if he could take some coffee from the lobby. He wasn’t staying at the hotel as a guest; we were just renting the meeting space. I said that was fine to have some. Then, an employee piped up,
“Act with Integrity!”
We all just nodded, and the employee put the coffee cup back on the stack. For Further ReadingCCC (now Altium Packaging) and their Guiding Principles hereMarket-Based Management® Principles Contact us for more information on this topic: Guiding Principles- a blueprint for conducting business and a launching pad for defining your company’s leadership behaviors and competencies. About the AuthorsMatthew Smart is a Certified Change Management Specialist (CMS) and dynamic learning & OD consultant with 15+ years’ experience implementing high-impact programs to move people FWD, create meaningful change, and yield significant ROI for clients. As a consultant, Matthew takes an interest in OD/HR work, helping companies build multi-level leadership programs and talent processes to enhance hiring/acquisition, onboarding, performance, coaching, and employee engagement to create positive and attractive places to work.
Paula Pelletier, SPHR, is a results oriented employee relations professional with experience supporting Financial Services, Insurance, Manufacturing & Healthcare industries. Conducting complex and thorough investigations involving sexual harassment, discrimination, retaliation & agency charges while interfacing with C-Suite executives, Front line management, attorneys, HR professionals and government agency representatives.
Her goals and interest include: Developing robust employee relations solutions that support business goals and people initiatives. Start-up and turnaround opportunities.
Specialties: Designing practical business solutions for complex people issues, building credible business partnerships, coaching leaders, promoting open door, implementing proactive measures and training, conducting investigations, handling agency complaints, reducing legal exposure.
I remember traveling across the country delivering training sessions to plant leaders and thinking like a “Disciplined Entrepreneur” when I ordered a meal with my company credit card:
“A disciplined entrepreneur would order a chicken breast not the filet.”
Laugh if you want. But it’s like a song you can’t get out of your head. You start to live them. Everyday.
I got a dose of humility too. We were facilitating a leadership training session at a hotel and a participant asked if he could take some coffee from the lobby. He wasn’t staying at the hotel as a guest; we were just renting the meeting space. I said that was fine to have some. Then, an employee piped up,
“Act with Integrity!”
We all just nodded, and the employee put the coffee cup back on the stack. For Further ReadingCCC (now Altium Packaging) and their Guiding Principles hereMarket-Based Management® Principles Contact us for more information on this topic: Guiding Principles- a blueprint for conducting business and a launching pad for defining your company’s leadership behaviors and competencies. About the AuthorsMatthew Smart is a Certified Change Management Specialist (CMS) and dynamic learning & OD consultant with 15+ years’ experience implementing high-impact programs to move people FWD, create meaningful change, and yield significant ROI for clients. As a consultant, Matthew takes an interest in OD/HR work, helping companies build multi-level leadership programs and talent processes to enhance hiring/acquisition, onboarding, performance, coaching, and employee engagement to create positive and attractive places to work.
Paula Pelletier, SPHR, is a results oriented employee relations professional with experience supporting Financial Services, Insurance, Manufacturing & Healthcare industries. Conducting complex and thorough investigations involving sexual harassment, discrimination, retaliation & agency charges while interfacing with C-Suite executives, Front line management, attorneys, HR professionals and government agency representatives.
Her goals and interest include: Developing robust employee relations solutions that support business goals and people initiatives. Start-up and turnaround opportunities.
Specialties: Designing practical business solutions for complex people issues, building credible business partnerships, coaching leaders, promoting open door, implementing proactive measures and training, conducting investigations, handling agency complaints, reducing legal exposure.