Does your organization have “guiding principles,” “core values,” or something similar?  If so, I want to challenge you–today–to find ways to use those principles to help you manage others.

What do I mean by ”principles helping to manage”?  Perhaps it’s helpful to first look at the opposite situation I want to describe. 

An individual working in an organization not managed by principles might see one of two extremes.  There could be micro managing, where the employees aren’t trusted to act autonomously and so must be controlled.  Controlled by whom?  By me, the brilliant manager of course!  At the other extreme, there could be anarchy where “anything goes.”  Q.: Is this the right way to act?  A.: It depends.  Depends on what?  The opinion of me (at a given time on a given day, and dependent upon my mood), the brilliant manager! 

Both of these extremes, I would wager, make it hard to get long-term success.  In both cases, in some form we’ve cut out the employee’s ability to think creatively, act entrepreneurially, and be held accountable for results and how those results were achieved. 

A principles-based organization, rather, would lay out the few, important, non-negotiable things that an employee should keep in mind, and allow those things to guide the majority* of decisions.

Consider your basic assumptions about employees.  Are they creative?  Do they want to do a good job and make a difference?  Are they entrepreneurial? 

If those assumptions jive with your view of the average employee, you don’t want to stifle them with useless bureaucracy and manuals and directives.  In fact, enforcing the particulars will often cause the general to break down, in addition to squashing any spark of passion employees might have for their work.

Instead, what can you do–today–to hold someone accountable to achieve results using your stated principles, as opposed to following your stated orders?  How can you provide feedback to someone along the lines of your organization’s values as opposed to a will-’o-the-wisp feeling?

If you’re looking for inspiration, check out this video from Stanford’s eCorner. 

Finally, I’ll add one more item to the mix. So far, we’ve exclusively discussed one aspect of MBM: Virtue and Talents. We need to keep in mind that there are five dimensions to MBM. Imagine an organization where you hired great, virtuous folks who truly embraced your principles, but you had no incentives in place to motivate them. Or no vision to guide everyone. Or no clarity around who “owns” what, or how to measure success.

* Of course, “guiding principles” is not code for “no supervision, no bureaucracy, no policies and no oversight.  Rather, it is often the case that some detailed policies will be needed to deal with legal or HR issues, to ensure uniformity of strategy across departments, etc.  I want to be careful not to give the impression that MBM is about decentralizing as much as possible.  Rather, we want to focus on creating value, and a mixture of principles that guide behavior and detailed policies will likely be needed.

Guiding Principles, Micro Management, Office Space, Stanford eCorner, TPS Report