Wrestle With Your Principles — Decisions Series #4

Welcome to The Art of Accomplishment, where we explore how deepening connection with ourselves and others leads to creating the life we want with enjoyment and ease. I'm Brett Kistler, here today with my co-host Joe Hudson. Good morning.

Good morning. Hey, how is, um, the integration going for you at the last retreat?

Man, it's, it's a lot. It's really good. There's a—

that was a big one. Yeah, yeah.

I guess context for listeners, we just did a week-long retreat and, uh, I was a participant in it on this one and got to go through the whole process, which was beautiful.

Um, yeah, and yeah, it was awesome to watch you.

Awesome. Yeah, thank you. I had this particular opening where I just felt into some like really deep guilt from early childhood and it moved. And since then I've been having this kind of disorienting experience of there being sort of a, like a memory in my body of where there used to be a small amount of guilt in many different kinds of interactions that was never about the interaction, but like my mind would have previously made it about the interaction.

Like, yeah. Oh yeah.

I'm like talking to somebody about something I'm doing And I'm noticing the absence of being self-conscious, like I'm trying to sell them something. That is awesome. And I'm kind of disoriented by it. Like, oh yeah, it's just kind of nice to just be here and talk about it. And there's not that little bit of low-level residual emotion from a long, long, long time ago. So yeah, sort of stepping out into my life and seeing where all of the, you know, where that fractal amount of difference shows up in all of my interactions.

Yeah, that's awesome. That makes me happy.

And also just feeling generally more sensitive. I'm noticing more subtle emotions in myself and noticing more subtle emotions if someone else is in the room and they're feeling an emotion. I'm like, oh, what is this? I'm reminding myself, yeah, that doesn't have to be mine. That's just something that's over there.

That's cool. Yeah, you look great. You look wonderful.

Thanks. Yeah.

Cool. Well, now that I've sidetracked us right from, right from the beginning, I sidetracked us. What are we supposed to do today, Brett?

Yeah, beautiful sidetrack.

Thanks.

So for today, we have the final episode in the curriculum for the Decision Series, for the Decisions Course, uh, and we're going to talk about principles.

Awesome. Oh, good. That's one of my, one of my favorite topics, and yet it's one of those topics that I notice when I speak it And I'm like, if I'm with a whole bunch of executives and we talk about principles, it's so close to other things that it gets discarded as a values exercise or something like that, like one of these exercises where we all get together and agree on something and then it makes no difference. And yet, it's such a driving force in my life and the way that I live. It's something I love talking about. And when I see it click in folks, it's amazing how it changes their life. And yet, for so many, I see that it just gets disregarded as something that they've heard before, some sort of static.

Yeah.

Okay. I'll be curious to see how we do on this one.

Yeah. So maybe let's start with differentiating what is it that you mean when you say principles that might help people not see it as what you just described as what they might have previously seen as values or something else?

Yeah. I don't know when the whole values thing started. I think it was Covey. He was a guy who did the Franklin Planner and he had this whole thing about values. I remember doing it when I was first doing investment banking. And then, all these companies, every company had to do values. And so, they became these exercises. And about, you know, and I suppose I think originally was designed to be, oh, like, who are we in this world and what do we stand for? And I think there's been two problems with those. The first one is that the values became super generic, um, and the second is they're really hard to act upon them. Like, we value honesty. Well, like, right, isn't that what we're all supposed to do generally anyways? And so it wasn't wasn't differentiated. And then I think the other problem with it is that it was just kind of top-down or it was some group somewhere in the company came up with this idea of values. But when Kobe originated the concept, I think it was closer to the idea of principles that I have now. And I was reminded by that because we were doing this retreat in San Diego and we were in this house that was owned by these Mormons. And I don't know if Kobe was a Mormon, but it was adopted there. And, and so they had like their mission statement. This family had a mission statement and values in the house that we were renting on Airbnb. It was actually quite lovely. I was, I was like, oh, what a sweet, sweet thing. Um, the difference is, however, that principles for me is how do you make a decision by it. Meaning that, okay, I value honesty, for instance, right? So unless I am choosing to be dishonest, which is not a choice that I would make almost ever, then there's no choice that I'm, that I'm going to make based on that value. Whereas a principle is all designed on choice. It's all designed on how do you make choices automatically because you live by a set of principles. And so they should very much be, um, designed to create action and to clarify decision-making so you don't have to stop and think about big decisions.

Yeah. Can you give an example of how, how a principle might help you make a decision?

And yeah, absolutely. In the way that you're describing, the most articulate one that I've ever heard as far as the principle goes is something that, um, a gentleman from MIT taught me. He said, when we're solving a problem and it's a complex problem, the first thing I was taught to do is go to the part I know the least about and, and do a small experiment there that will teach me the most about the thing I know least about. So, and he gave this great description. He said, if I'm building a car and I know how to do all the parts of a car except for the drivetrain, then I would— what most of the time will happen is I'd build the whole car and then I'd build the drivetrain because I would build the thing that I know. And then I build the drivetrain and then I'd realize my drivetrain wasn't what I thought it'd be and I'd have to rebuild the whole car. So instead what I'll do is I'll do this simplest experiment to learn the most about the drivetrain, and then I will build the drivetrain first and then I'll build the car around it. And that's a principle that immediately when you're solving a problem, you know what to do first. Look for the thing you know the least about, figure out how to find the most in the simplest way. That immediately tells you what to do. So that's a great principle for engineering and design.

What's another, what's another example of a principle in kind of another arena?

Yeah, so for me, one of my, yeah, one of my principles is connection, connection, connection. And so for me, that principle tells me immediately what to do in most situations where there's any kind of problem that's happening. So, so for instance, let's say I am tired and I notice that my mind is being negative and, and the world isn't going the way that I want it to go. What do I do? First thing I do is connect. And, and, and for me, that's connecting with myself and the people around me. If I'm having a, um, problem in the business and we don't know how to solve it, the first thing I do is connect. I connect with myself about what I want. I connect with everybody else to talk about the problem. So that's another example is like where for me connection is a a principle. And I had— and I use the words connection, connection, connection, because it starts with connection, you maintain connection, and when in doubt, you connect. And so that is something that allows me to know what to do in any time that there's a problem. That's an example.

So it sounds like maybe some of the distinction that you're making here between the way that you see principles and the way that values are commonly held is that principles are something that's sort of an action. Like, from your principle can flow action in a situation, whereas from a value, value might be more about how you want things to be generally, but it doesn't necessarily flow into, into your decision tree or factor into it other than just to tell you what you should be doing according to some standard.

Right, right. Yeah. It's kind of more of a morality. It's kind of like the value situation seems to be more of a morality and it's about what not to do. And principles are more about what you do. And that's another way to look at it. Another great example of a principle is, um, there's, you know, there's a guy named Ray Dalio, and he, um, he's made his principles pretty famous. And, and one of his principles is that transparent markets are efficient markets, which means that efficient markets mean the things that are actually of value rise to their value And things that aren't, don't. So that's an efficient market. There's no arbitrage opportunity where things are valued because of inefficiencies in the market rather than of their actual worth. And so he sees his business as a marketplace in itself. And so he was like, "A transparent market is an efficient market, so I will have my business be transparent." And that led him all the way to videotaping all the meetings. And even if— apparently, even if you're in a water cooler and you're having a conversation about something, you're supposed to record it, and then they're supposed to be able to see it. And so it's like a— the idea is a completely transparent situation. And, and as the story goes, you know, everybody was opposed to it because they were like, man, the lawyers get a hold of this, we'll be able to be sued, and da da da, you can't have this kind of— and it turns out apparently they get sued a lot less because they have it all on tape and everybody knows it, so nobody does any kind of crap. So, so it's just like that transparency does make a, like, a very efficient market, a very honest market. I would say transparency more than an efficient market. It, it doesn't allow, um, rotten culture. The more transparent the culture, the less rot that can happen, the less dry rot in the corners can happen.

Yeah. So, so in this case, the principle could be seen as a thesis, and your thesis could be correct or incorrect or lead to different results in the market. Like, without, without saying how correct or incorrect, it could just lead you to different places. You have different principles, it'll take you different places. If you operate by a set of principles, you'll be able to make decisions really fast that are relatively consistent, so you're more likely to get to wherever your principles would lead you.

Correct.

Than if you didn't have them.

Exactly. And, and that's— I think you just said something in passing there that is so important, which is that principles lead you. When you've decided on some principles, you follow them. You know, when we did the big 18-month course together and I stuck the principles on the wall, it was like that was the authority. The authority was the principles that we live by, and it didn't matter about me or somebody else if there was a way to look at and say, "Hey, there's a way that we can live more closely to those principles," and that's what we were there to do. And so, yes, we follow them. And that's another great thing to see is that when you have a great set of principles, the authority isn't in what you want, the authority isn't in what you're scared of, it's not in the fear, the authority is in the principles and that's what you follow.

And I guess something that comes up for me there is with this principles as thesis idea, if you consistently make decisions based on something that you're not aware of, it is effectively a principle. So you might be making decisions as a business that profit is more important than our people. And you may never have explicitly said that, but if those are the decisions you tend to make because there's the fear of not making enough profit, then you're going to go wherever those principles would lead you, but you're not aware of it, so you can't iterate on the principle.

That is right. Yeah, so that's true. And in a way, most of us are operating on a set of principles anyways, and might be to avoid fear. That might be the principle, or the principle might be to, um, make as much money as possible in the shortest period of time. It might be to just win at any cost. And it might be to put somebody's discomfort ahead of profit. You know, I see that happen in a lot of nonprofits or even the viability of the company. And so whatever that is, that principle is how you're making decisions. And one of the things about a principles exercise in the way that you live is that it brings those things to light and it allows you to iterate and modify them. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. So sort of this idea that we are all operating under principles that we can become more and more aware of and then be more, you know, conscious of which ones we're choosing to adhere to. That kind of brings up the question of how did this particular form of relating to principles arise for you?

Yeah.

How did this distinction come up in your life such that you could articulate it?

Yeah, that's a great question. Yeah. So the first one that— the first principle that dawned on me before it was even conscious was the principle of embracing intensity. And I started noticing, um, that when, when I did lean into the difficult thing— I think it started with therapy with Tara when we were first married, and we were We were highly dysfunctional in our relationship. I learned that if we would discuss the difficult thing, if we would address it no matter how scary it was, that would make our marriage stronger. And so, I started doing that somewhat naturally and then I realized, "Okay. Well, I wonder if this works in other parts of my life as well." And, in business, I saw that, you know, the CEOs who leaned into the thing that people didn't want to talk about, didn't want to lean into, wanted to get the bad news, wanted the bad data, they just were more successful. And so, leaning in there. And then, I had that experience that I've talked about a couple of times of driving past a house where I felt really horrible because we've been evicted or whatnot. And And I just leaned in there to the emotional experience and that created a tremendous amount of freedom. And I kept on embracing that intensity and I just realized, "Oh, this is just something that works across the board and it's something that I do generally." And at some point later on, I saw that like maybe I was creating intensity to embrace instead of embracing and it didn't work. And so then there's that distinction that was created. So for me, that was the first one. And then, I was like, oh, this is this thing in my life that once I recognize it, I do it all the time, even when I don't want to, even when it's not the convenient thing, even because I see that it works just so consistently and so well. I just, I just naturally do it, much like working out. I know if I work out, I feel better, so I work out even though it might be uncomfortable and And that was the first principle and that's where it all stemmed from. Then, I started looking for the other principles and what works really well and living by them and experimenting with them and then seeing what worked, what didn't work, when it worked, when it didn't work. Yeah.

I'm wondering if you could— there was a moment in there that you mentioned the driving by the house example. I'm wondering if you could just kind of give us a different version of that.

Oh, yeah. There's a thousand of them. Yeah, during the retreat that we were we were doing, there was, uh, you know, oftentimes when we're doing a retreat, what happens is that somebody uncovers something that's deep in them. Like you were saying, you uncovered the, um, that little bit of guilt. And if somebody uncovers something that is particular to their father, oftentimes they will act that thing out with me. And so during the last retreat, I had somebody who was acting it out with me, and normally that's not a bother for me. However, this particular one was a bother because it hooked exactly with the thing that hooks in me. And so when I'd see that person and they would try to trigger me, I'd actually get triggered. And instead of like just see it as, you know, the shame football that they were throwing around, or the— them acting out, looking for their, their process of healing. And, and so I was taking it, uh, personally. And, and so for me, the whole thing is to feel is to absolutely deeply feel that taking it personally is to feel the, "Oh, I've done something wrong here. What am I—" Allow that entire emotional experience through and then to love it and welcome it. And then, I'm no longer triggered by them and I'm able to speak to it. Another one was I had somebody about a year and a half ago write me a letter. And, even if it was all projection, it doesn't really matter. They were They had this thing where they just really wanted to tell me what was right. And when I read it, one part of it just felt like a kick in the gut. And so, I reread that letter every day for, I don't know, it was probably about a week until there was no more kick in the gut, until I could totally be with that and there was no resistance to what they were saying. That would be another example.

How do you state the principles that you were just describing in these examples? What was that connection?

Those are all embrace intensity. For me, those are all embrace intensity. So there was this intense moment of a trigger or this tense moment of a gut punch. And then how do I lean into that, love that, welcome that? For me, those are all embrace intensity. Yeah. Okay.

So before we move on, I'd like to kind of just touch a little bit more on what makes these, what makes principles important to you? And in particular, within this work?

Yeah, the, the— so if I look at my life and I think, how did I get here? It was just the sum of decisions that I made. If I look at everything that's going right and going wrong, at least the part that I have any kind of control over, it's the decisions that I've made. There's some things that obviously I have no control over, um, so making decisions is an incredibly important part of of the result of my life. And the funny thing is I said it about companies way before I said it about myself or somebody's life. I would say the only thing that you have in a company is people's relationships and people's decisions. That's really all that you have and those are kind of the atomic structure of a company. But decisions that we make, it's also the atomic structure of our life, what we choose to do with our time and our energy and how we choose to be with people, et cetera. That really is the result. And so, really looking at that process and figuring out how to refine it and make it most efficient is, for me, is paramount for living the life that you want to live. Or at least, maybe it's not paramount because there's a lot of ways to live a great life without looking at it. However, I would say it is such a great leverage point, such a great tool to really look at and refine the way you make decisions.

So how have your principles changed and evolved over time?

Is that all? Or have you just been slowly—

A lot. —winning down to some core principles that seem to be true for you?

Yeah, they've changed a lot. As you said at the beginning, they were just unconscious whatsoever. I think my principles, if I think about myself in the '20s, I'd say that my principles, especially before therapy, I'd say my principles were be scared of love, try to get love, don't get it, but try to get it, be scared of it, find any kind of way outside of the pain from my self-abuse. Oh, those are— if I look at the principles I was living by, those are the principles I was living by. And, and I think there was also taking care of others even if it wasn't— I know that's true— taking care of others even if it wasn't good for me. Those are the principles, out of a sense of obligation, that obligation made me good and moral. And so those were what I was living by, but I wasn't conscious of it at all. And then when I started thinking about it consciously A couple of things happened. The first thing that happened was the embrace intensity one happened and then the next obvious one was the connection one. And then I noticed that I had some that were overlapping and some that weren't as useful and some that were more moral and less action-based. So all those things moved for me. And the ones that I'm with now have been consistent for about 5 years. But even one of them changed a little bit. I had One, it used to— I think the first iteration of it was, "What are you curious about right now?" And then there was an iteration of it is, "What's the question?" was the principle. And now it's just "Wonder!" exclamation point. It's just like wonder. And it feels like a— And so, "What are you curious about?" was a pointer to look for the unknown to see the thing that you wouldn't otherwise see to keep a learner's mindset. It was all an indication of that. And I find that wonder is a stronger force. It doesn't require me looking for an answer. It's the openness and it's the awe without the needing of an answer, which seems to drive much better decision-making, problem-solving than trying to get to the answer. That try and disconnects me. And so, that one is the only one that's changed in the last 5 years, but I'm constantly thinking about them, which I think is the most important part is the experimentation and the thinking about it and reviewing it is more important than the actual principles is what I've noticed. Okay.

So, in these examples, you've described principles that have worked for you as an executive coach living in Sonoma County. And I'm curious, like, how would this work if you switch context entirely? And let's say you're a soldier in Ukraine, Neither of us have context on that, but what would you— how would you imagine that your principles would play out there?

Yeah, that's a great, great, holy crap, great question. So I'm hoping that they would be similar. Like, if I let my imagination go for a minute, and I would think, oh, you know, connecting with the unit that I'm in and having that strong sense of connection would be incredibly important, connecting with myself on a regular basis so that I was not acting out of fear but acting in the way that I wanted to act would be really important. Embracing intensity would be really important rather than running away from the emotional experience or running away from the job that needed to be done or doing the job that needed to be done half-assed because I would think that that would be really important. I would think that wonder maybe, now that I think about it, might not be as important in that situation. Probably not.

I don't know. I think it would be. I mean, if you're, if you're following an order or following a, a tactical plan, you need to be in wonder to notice if something has changed. If you're not in wonder. Yeah. You know, especially if you're doing things that are deadly.

Yeah.

Consequences could be severe. Yeah.

But yeah, I could see how you would know that jumping off of incredibly tall objects.

Yeah. You must stay in wonder.

Stay in wonder. So, I would hope that they would be the same. However, I also have like— there's sets of principles for certain contexts that I use. Like, there's sets of principles I think about for marketing. For instance, when we do marketing, I have all these principles. It's about connection. It's about embracing and saying the thing that people normally wouldn't say. It's being in wonder about where people are. It's constantly iterating is another principle I have. However, there's marketing principles I have too, which is like everything you do in marketing isn't meant to sell anything. It's just to help people see the appeal of the next step of the process. And so for me, that's— and another principle I have in marketing is that marketing needs to be teaching. So meaning that the marketing isn't to sell something, it's to create an epiphany. And if people want epiphanies, they'll keep on following, following the marketing, so to speak. And so So, if the marketing isn't part of the teaching, then it's not the marketing I want to do as an example. Those don't apply to everything. And so, I'm sure that there would be some principles to war that I would acquire and be thinking about so that I can make split-second decisions that I have no idea what it would be. And, I would also think that these principles might be modified like connection, connection, connection. So, if I have somebody I'm competing with on a business context, I'll still connect with them. I find that that works really well. In fact, it's one of Silicon Valley's like, I think one of their big strengths is that a lot of people who would be competitors actually work together in this field. And that whole, like, 100% competition all the time thing is very different than back in the IBM days, for instance. However, I might not want to connect with the, like, depending on the position, if I am like a private foot soldier, I'm not really thinking about connecting with the Russian private foot soldier on the other side. If I'm the general, I might be.

So I want to connect with where their position is and information about them. So it's like, you know, keep your friends close and your competitors closer.

So I think that they would— they would— there would be a modification. I would understand the principles differently and, and probably more deeply, and then that would affect— and so I constantly am trying to apply these principles in different contexts to see if they still work and see what I can break about them and see what needs to change. And so I would assume that I would— my understanding of these principles would change if I was in a war as well.

Yeah. So ultimately, you're saying here that your principle of everything is an iteration applies to your principles as well?

That's correct. Yeah, I'm constantly— the power, like I said, the power of having principles is less about the principles you have and more about the process And I think that this is the thing that gets people all the time is that they, whether they're CEOs or they're creating their own personal principles, it's like, I've got them and that's it. And then what happens is like, you know, 3 years later, they've completely forgotten their principles and they're not living them. And so I think one of the Steve Jobs, I think it was Steve Jobs, one of his principles is wrestle with your principles. That was one of the— that's the job is to continually wrestle with them. And so that's the same. Yeah. That's— so for me, it's the same thing. It's everything is an iteration that each of these things, I'm— it's a process of learning. It is not a process of knowing.

Yeah. Okay. So let's talk a little bit about, you know, while you are iterating on your principles, how do you keep them well-defined? How do you define them such that they are actionable principles and they don't start drifting into the space of shoulds or morality or values and lose their teeth.

Yeah, that's great. So I really think it's important to keep to about 5 principles. Not having too many is you don't remember them and you can't wrestle with them as well. So my principles, I think we've gone over most of them. Connection, connection, connection. Everything is an iteration. Everything in iteration for me is about never thinking that— A, never thinking there's an answer, and B, never having the shame of getting it wrong. It's just about you're constantly learning and you're continuing to iterate. Wonder, exclamation point. Embrace intensity and loving accountability. And loving accountability is how do I hold accountability without shame is another way to say that. So, when I'm defining them, I define each as what they are and what they're not. And that's a really important thing. So any principle, whether it's in a company or whether it's your personal principle, can be taken to such an extreme that it does almost the opposite thing. So a great example of this is inclusion. It would be, let's say one of your principles is inclusion. Inclusion taken all the way to some end is very destructive and it isn't what's meant by inclusion anymore. So are we including murderers? Are we including people who are toxic for the environment? Are we including— what are we inclusive of exactly? And so inclusive and say, if I was to have a principle like inclusive, it would be be open to— it would be defined as something like being open to different points of view from different backgrounds. It would be seek to understand before you seek to prove wrong, things like that. It would be very much about that kind of inclusion. And, it would not be things like everybody has a voice even if they're not contributing. Like, if you're not being a part of the solution, having a voice is actually quite detrimental, or it would not be that we are including things that are outside of our principles, as an example. So really important to talk about what they are and what they are not, and to have, like, clear examples of them is very important. And And that's what you run your tests on. So let's say if my principle is inclusion, or that wouldn't be mine. Let's say one of mine, actually, everything is an iteration. If that's my principle, then I'm constantly running experiments. Okay. So is it an iteration, for instance, that, oh, just put the thing on the website, don't care if the grammar is good? That's just an iteration. That doesn't feel right to me. That's like, no, we can make it as best as possible. So I don't want to say we're not going to do quality because it's an iteration. What I do want to say is we're going to do our best work, but we're going to see that the best work is going to have problems, and that to get it done and test it is more important than to try to get it perfect. And so I need to understand both sides of the principle, where the limits of the principle are. And so to do that, I always define it by, what is and what isn't. The other thing that's really important is you're trying to convince— you're trying to convince isn't the right word, but you're trying to affect behavior. And so, you need to use some marketing techniques as whenever— marketers are really good at affecting behavior, right? So, for me, making them memorable, everything is an iteration, loving accountability, these are things that are very wonder. These are things that are very memorable to me. And so, I'm more apt to use them and to make them memorable. And that needs to be part of it. The other thing that is really important is that I need to have a felt sense of them to really be able to define what the principle is somatically. What does it feel like to be in everything is an iteration? What does it feel like to be embracing intensity? So there's a somatic response for me to really feeling into what it is to live in that principle. What's the state that it brings me to and what's the state it doesn't bring me to? So I don't have just an intellectual one. I have a felt sense of it because the felt sense is what helps me make decisions quicker than just an intellectual one.

Yeah, I'm curious how that would apply to a business principle like Ray Dalio's regarding the efficiency of the market. How does that show up in the body?

Yeah, so for me— Transparency. Transparency. If that's my principle, there's a very clear feeling that I have when I'm hiding something. There's a very clear feeling that I'm like— and I'm sneaky. There's a very sneaky feeling. And so for me, transparency very much is like, oh, this— and transparency also, if I'm living it at its very edge, then there's a little bit of fear. Like, to allow, you know, to open the kimono fully, so to speak, to video that thing, there's going to be a little bit of fear to it. So, I know like, "Oh, that's the edge of my transparency." Whereas being transparent in a way that hurts somebody wouldn't feel good in my system and it wouldn't be an edge of like, "Oh my gosh." It wouldn't be like walking into a giant room and being on a stage. It would be like hurting somebody and that would be a very different somatic experience. Yeah.

And then, extending this to being if there was a principle in a company of transparency. Anybody in a meeting could sense if, if there's not transparency in that meeting. There's, there's a way that you can feel that. You feel the tension in your body, you feel something off. And if the principle is to speak to that, then that'll produce a lot more—

yeah, a lot more transparency. And so they have great transparency, but here's something that I can almost guarantee you they don't have. They have algorithms for their I mean, this is a hedge fund company. Ray Dalio's company is a hedge fund company. I'm sure they're not like giving like the janitor the algorithm for their, you know, for their, for their alpha hedge fund or whatever it is. So, so even there, there's like, there's a what is it and what is it not, right? It's, you have to define it both ways. And, and there's a clear feeling. It would not feel the same way videoing all the meetings and watching videos where your name was mentioned would feel one way and like handing trade secrets off to the janitor would feel a very different way in the body.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. What else comes up for you around definition of principles?

The other thing is that the definition is less important than the experimentation. Again, the most important thing is Okay. So, here's a principle I want to live by. Every day you do an experiment. Every day, maybe 2 or 3 times a day you do an experiment. How did that work? What worked for me? Does it work overall? Because there's no principle that you're going to have that's going to feel great all the time. I'm sure that, for instance, one time that videotaped meeting lost them some money or lost them a really good person. I'm sure that nothing works 100% of the time when it comes to humanity. And so, doing lots of experimentation and really understanding it and keeping it alive and constantly doing the experiments constantly, it's something that you revisit on a regular basis and wrestle with it as it were, that's more important than anything else because it's what you know of it. If I say transparency to you and I say transparency to me, they could mean and feel very different ways. And so, what's important is that experimentation. And, that is particularly important inside of companies, particularly important inside of companies, that it's not something, it's not something that 5 people do. It's something that everybody experiments with and learns from.

Yeah, so that brings up the question, how, how if you are the leader in an organization, do you, you know, build an organization that operates on principles when you're only one person and you're not wanting to do this in a top-down way, but that's the only leverage point you have.

Yeah, so this is— so seemingly, I have walked a ton of CEOs through this intellectually, and then I've actually gone into companies and done it with CEOs before. And there's a lot of subtle steps that if they're missed, then it won't work. And so the way— I'll tell you how I do it and I'll tell you where the missteps typically are. So the way that I would do it is I would say, "Okay." We would go to the executive team and say, "Okay, here's the assignment. Come up with 5 principles that you think that we should run the company together." And then all of them would present it to the CEO and the CEO would present theirs And so, they would all do that independently so that you had independent thought. Pretty soon, you would find out that everybody really probably agreed on the same 5 principles, that different wording, different things, and maybe 2 become 1, but pretty much, you're going to find there's not going to be a lot of disagreement typically. I've never had it. And then, once you have that, then the executive team experiments with them. They do one experiment every day. For one principle for 5 days. And so maybe it takes about a month where they experiment with all the principles and they online share. They have a channel where it's like, "I did this principle, this is what happened. I did this principle, this is what happened." They're all sharing and learning from each other's experiences so that you don't just get one person's experience from it. When that's done, then the CEO, because they are the CEO, is the final decision maker, says, "These are the experiments. This is what they mean and what they don't mean." And then you release them to the company. And then you say, "Okay, we're going to experiment with them." And the whole company experiments with these principles and you do it on— and I've done this in like a 1,200-person company where they're all— like there's channels, Slack or whatever channel, and where they're talking about the experiments they've done and they're learning from one another. And then they're saying, "Here are the problems," or, "This principle worked this way, but I didn't know about it this way." And then there's all this adjustment and learning. And so, they're all learning from each other what the principle— living by this principle actually means and where they can put it at use. And then, again, the CEO gets to decide what changes, if any changes, and how to define them based on all those experiments. The other thing that I have done with one company, which is a very flat organization, is Before the executives came together, the whole company had a week to watch this video I made about how to make them. And then they got to suggest some that the executives could pay attention to or not. So they were also part of the brainstorming process. And then every quarter or so, they'll take one of the principles and say, "Here's a principle that we're living by." And they'll all experiment with it. And do we want to change it? Is this still— or here's a new one that we want to try out. Does this work? Do we add it? Do we subtract something? And so it is a way to wrestle with them. And then that's how it works. And so what stops working for people when it doesn't work is—

Yeah. What are the pitfalls?

How does this not work? No experimentation. People aren't being held accountable for the experimentation. Top-down, here are the principles. Somebody goes out into a room and says, "These are the principles," or some small group goes out into a room and says, "Here are the principles." None of that works. The other thing that I do at the end of the— once all of this is done, then everybody's responsible. Everybody in the company is responsible for finding and committing to one way of reminding everybody to live to the principles. And maybe that's making a sign that you put in the bathrooms, or maybe that's having a discussion group once every quarter, or maybe that's changing the way that you do reviews so that the principles are a part of the review process, or maybe that's changing the sales pipeline so that, let's say, connection is a bigger part of the sales. But what happens is after the processes be done, everybody is responsible for implementing those principles some way in the company. Everybody has an assign— that they get to choose on their own. And so, that again makes it so that it's a lived thing. It's not just an exercise that was done. And so, a lot of times CEOs will either assign those tasks and that doesn't work. It needs to be volunteered and needs to be out of their own initiative. And then, or there's just no tasks. It's like, "Okay, we did the exercise. Now, we'll live by those principles." And I've had people in companies like create emojis for the principles and then that becomes shorthand inside of the company. And I've seen it so that like it just becomes, you know, the principles become shorthand or it's like decision-making. It's like, "Oh, yeah. What's this principle say we should do?" And then everybody's like, "Yep. Okay. That's what we're doing." And so when it works, it works really well. It saves so much time even though there's a, you know, it's kind of like being a great parent or training a dog, it takes a lot of upfront time, but it saves a tremendous amount of time on the back end.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. What else? What are some— I'm curious to just kind of get some disaster stories from you in, uh, in principle setting, uh, you know, discovery rollout.

Yeah, so the only thing that doesn't work for people is that they don't wrestle with them, they don't constantly iterate, they're not running the experiments, and that's when the principles fail for people. And the They don't fail, like they don't blow up people's lives. What I notice is what they do is they just don't live by the principles and then they're back into the old patterns. And so, they don't make decisions quickly, gracefully, or I would say with a better result. In companies, there is one other thing that has happened in some of the companies where they have like we have our mission statement, which is meaningless that nobody looks at and we have our core values, which is meaningless and nobody looks at or it's meaningful and nobody looks at. And then they're like, "Okay, now we're going to do principles." And it's like, "Shit, now we have a mission and we have the— what do I listen to?" It's just confusing. The signal-to-noise ratio is just way too high. And so I think it's really important if a company is going to do it to really prioritize how you're doing this and what's really needed and what's not needed and what's being listened to. And like anything, you have to edit really well. You have to throw stuff out to make it work. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's it. Awesome. Yeah, awesome. Well, thank you very much. Appreciate your time, and, uh, I'm glad that we got this, uh, last one for the Decision Course created, and I look forward to our next one.

Yeah, me too. Looking forward to it. Awesome. All right, thank you. Bye. Thanks for listening to The Art of Accomplishment. If you enjoyed what you heard today, please subscribe and rate us in your podcast app. We'd love your feedback, so feel free to send us questions or comments. You can reach out to us, join our newsletter, or check out our courses at artofaccomplishment.com.