This presentation walks through how to think about building your core foundation of company principles and how we did it at Stride.

1. Launching Principles
A Core Imperative for High Growth Organizations
www.stride.services

2. Principles are the Frame for a
Company
• Dictate our non-negotiables
• Liberate employees to take action
• Act as a filter for internal and external
decisions
• Apply uniquely for different people, roles
and circumstances
• Give a company flexibility to experiment
• Can be both personal and professional.

3. The Power of Principles
Principles are about getting in control of the type
of organization you want to intentionally design.
Principles are the “norms” of our company that
dictate how we engage with each other, ourselves
and our customers.
Principles are not theory. They are tactical
applications for each individual or group.

4. What do
these mean?
How do
these show
up in what
we do?
• We make and honor
commitments
• Wisdom of the group
(WOG)
• We invest in ourselves
and each other
• Empowerment
• Celebrate wins.
Celebrate each other.

5. • Work Principles
– Trust in radical truth
– Cultivate meaningful relationships
– It is okay to make mistakes;
unacceptable to not learn from them.
– Get and stay in sync
– Believability weight your decision-
making
• Life Principles
– Embrace reality and deal with it
– 5 Steps to get what you want out of life
– Be radically open minded
– Understand that people are wired
differently
– Invest in your health
• People Principles
– The Who is more important
than theWhat
– Hire right, the penalties for
Wrong are huge
– Constantly train, test, evaluate
and sort
• Operating Principles
– Manage as someone operating
a machine to achieve your goal
– Perceive and don’t tolerate
problems
– Diagnose problems to get to
root causes
– Do what you set out to do
– Don’t overlook governance

6. What are
your
Principles?

7. • The key here is to
slowly infuse key
principles into the
organization.
• The intent is that
these can be fun.
• Yes, this is culture
but it is also part of
organizational
design

8. Step 1: Create an Enduring Environment to Capture
Principles
(we use Canny.io - $50/month)

9. A Step by
Step
Strategy
• Announce/Present Principles
• Launch Wisdom of the Group
– Capture input from people
– Not just limited to principles, but
many areas of the org.
• Roll out new Principles monthly
• Facilitate rapid small group
engagement: what does this
mean?
• Prioritize.
• Vote.
• Aggregate.
• Get into Canny.
• Communicate.
• Upvote.
• Execute.

10. Wash. Rinse.
Repeat
• A new principle monthly
• Visual display of top
level principles
• Recording of a detailed
resource (eventually
becomes the Bible) for
the orgs. Principles.

11. Ingredients
for
Success
• Leadership: support and
commitment
– Executives
– HR
– Managers
• Encouragement: of Canny as
an ideas capture engine
• Process: so that Ideas don’t fall
into a vortex
• Demonstration: of action/
progress
• Celebration: of examples
where our Principles were
executed.