The Power of Principles
post # 92 — May 31, 2006 — a Client Relations, Strategy post
I have just added to my audio page an interview with me on Eric Mattson’s MarketingMonger podcast series about the challenges facing businesses today and the principles that define successful business and managers.
One of the key messages I passed on was that the elements of good management often sound like “moral” points – you “should” care about clients and customers and you “should” act as if you cared about whether your employees are engaged and enthused. In the past, I used to apologize for this and say “it’s not a moral point, it just works in business!”
But then I made an interesting discovery. If you think something is a moral point, you’ll just implement and execute it better – and thereby get the business benefits faster and more extensively.
It turns out that there is nothing so powerful in business as actually having some principles that you actually hold on to passionately and require those around you to believe.
I further explore the ideas Eric and I discussed in these articles:
- Strategy and the Fat Smoker
- Do You Really Want Relationships
- Are You Abusive, Cynical, or Exciting?
- It’s Not How Good You Are, It’s How Much You Want It
(You can receive all of my future articles directly by subscribing to my free article newsletter.)
Thanks to Eric for the enjoyable interview. Best wishes to him on the remaining 968 interviews in his 1000 podcast series.
By the way, folks – does your experience match mine?
Do people who actually believe things and have a personal morality about how business should be conducted actually attract like-minded people and build more successful institutions?
What about the opposite? Can you be a “pragmatic skeptic” and still build a thriving, financially successful business?
Matt Moore said:
There’s some interesting anthropological research on the persistence of ritual in the absence of belief.
Less academically, I think people will judge you by your actions. Only the people close to you will know the moral or philosophical underpinnings for those actions. But a strong belief system means that you are less willing to compromise in your choice of actions.
All organisations have values – but they are rarely the ones that appear in mission statements under the heading of “corporate values”.
posted on May 31, 2006