Principles and values
I was asked only last week to attend a panel discussion and share what I had learned about collaboration and enablement through a recent process transformation. I shared that change management across integrated teams is about being able to pull together and solve problems together against a shared vision of success. Questions that might be ‘how will you’ become ‘how will we’. Change management is as much about how you respond to the unexpected as it is follow the guidelines for the expected. Whether you’re planning D-Day, landing Apollo astronauts on the moon or working through process transformation, winning teams trust each other, understand what success looks like and believe and work with shared values and principles.
Roughly speaking, principles are the rules by which teams should operate; they’re the tangible ways of working. Values are the things that should make the experience positive; they’re what makes the working environment one that people want to be in. The main benefit of values and principles is that they should provide a compass on how to operate. They don’t tell you what to do, but they do guide on how it should be done. In an environment of volatility, uncertainty, confusion and ambiguity, which could be driven by external factors like market pressures or internal factors like high degrees of change, principles and values can persist as the guardrails to continue effective operations, even when the unexpected occurs. In environments where these dynamics are not established, agreeing values and principles helps unify teams in common ways of working. Here are some example principles that a Marketing team may align upon.
Principles
Strive for simplicity – avoid overengineering process and outputs, and re-use wherever possible.
Strive for standardisation – where possible use consistent standards that already exist or define new standards that can be taken forwards effectively.
Don’t over-plan or over-document – plans must capture ‘why’ and ‘how’; ‘what’ can follow at the right time and should respond to change and data.
Work sustainably – don’t confuse sprints with marathons; long-term success needs balance for both.
Challenge yourself – if you don’t others will.
Data and insight over opinion and prediction – lead with scientific learning not alchemic divination.
Debate diverse perspectives; decide and know why you’ve decided; commit and go so you can learn by doing. Most risks aren’t that big. Understand them, put them into proportion and then accept or mitigate them, as necessary.
Decisions are shared – committing to a course of action isn’t the same as agreeing with it. Once a decision is made, we are all committed to seeing it through and learning together based upon performance data.
Empower people and teams – small groups of highly motivated, empowered teams will always win the day over large, generally motivated groups. Be clear on what success looks like, then get out of their way to allow them to succeed.
Align priorities to constraints – constraints drive focus and resourcefulness. Maximise value from them by aligning to priorities.
Win the right way – we have values and principles for a reason. And we can’t win unless we all win; it’s a team sport.
Values
Customer value is our product. When we focus on creating value for customers we avoid the trap of doing more things rather than the right things
Value is subjective until it is tested. Focus on delivering value for customers early and learn through testing rather than assumption.
We are one team with one mission. Collaboration focused on connecting customer value produces better marketing than siloed departmental empire building.
It is a bad plan that cannot change. If we cannot evolve with our customers, markets and global trends then we risk under-delivering customer value.
Value excellence requires a focus on the details. We are all responsible for understanding the ‘why’ behind our marketing decisions.