A short, instructional monologue by Ashish Kothari advising small business owners to define and document core principles (who the business serves, its purpose, team goals), role-model those behaviors as leaders, communicate them regularly (quarterly reviews, all-hands, Q&A), and use the shared principles to guide decisions across the company.
Chapters
Almost every one of the small business owners I talk to does not have that luxury to go and inform every decision. But what happens when you ground yourself and your principles? Who am I? Who do I serve? Who do I not serve? Why am I here? Why are we here as a business? Why are my teammates here? What are we trying to accomplish? Right? And what do my customers really want? Like, knowing those things and incorporating them into. You'll know this as well. Role modeling and behaviors as the leader of the business means your team will intuitively pick them up. I would say to every business owner, you should write it all down, you should structure it. You should take once a quarter, reevaluate, and make sure you've got this down to communicate really well to your team. Maybe have all hands and you have, like, Q and A's and all that stuff. But, you know, there's no small business owner who's got time or energy to do that. So it starts with the principles, right? Starts with knowing these three things really well and acting up. And then decisions, not just by you, but by others in the company will pivot off of those principles because they're shared and people understand them.