Stride Principles

Our Principles at Stride define the way we work together, our behaviors and our norms that both represent the Stride brand and the environmental parameters where we can align and thrive as people.  Below, we have listed out our Principles and an explanation.  

PRINCIPLES

The following document details our Principles and how we can live these Principles in our business at Stride and in our lives.  This document is a living guide and is designed to grow and evolve. Each principle is broken down into four categories as follows:

1. Concept -- what is the definition of the principle

2. Science -- what is the scientific origin for this principle

3. Ways to Live the Principle -- how is this principle manifested in terms of action

4. Examples of Using this Principle at Stride -- what are examples of how this Principle shows up in our organization

Overview

What are Principles?

Principles are concepts that can be applied repeatedly in similar circumstances,  distinct from narrow answers to specific questions.

Why are Principles Important?

When we live our Principles we are more likely to achieve our goals in life.

Without Principles, decisions are harder to make.  We're inconsistent in our work and it's hard for people to know what to expect from each other.

How are Principles Used?

The best way to use a principle is to apply it to a decision / action you are facing as a guide for how to move forward with confidence and autonomy.  Every situation has its own circumstances, actors, and considerations but principles can help clarify a path forward. The idea is that you will consider principles in your decision making process.

Is there Science behind Principles?

Yes.  Core Principles are based on neuroscience, biology, and social science research.  We review the research to identify findings that identify how the brain works, how people learn and make decisions, and how to increase things like happiness and success. We adopt those research findings into our Principles.

How are Principles added? 

Principles are added by utilizing one of our principles, Wisdom of the Group. They are selected by a committee in the organization.  

How should we use this document?

Consider this a reference guide.  You should review and understand it, but there’s no reason to memorize it.  Rather, when you are thinking through a decision, use this as your guide.  

We’ve thought a lot about these principles so applying these in your particular situation is likely to get you a better outcome vs not using principles.  Of course, if you think something is missing or some, be vocal! Because we are all about embracing reality and dealing with it. 

Stride's Purpose

We help individuals with a thirst for continuous improvement pursue their highest and best purpose, whatever that might be. We achieve this by relentlessly grounding story with fact, starting with solid bookkeeping and accounting

Here's how we split apart this statement:

Why we Exist: We help individuals with a thirst for continuous improvement pursue their highest and best purpose

How we achieve our Why: Through relentlessly grounding story with fact

What we do today to move our How forward: bookkeeping and accounting

Stride Principles

1. Harness the Wisdom of the Group

Concept:  

Wisdom of the Group (WOG) is the premise that in many types of decisions, a group of people working together will make a superior decision than any single individual acting alone.

Science:

1. There is a wealth of research that establishes this Principle in various types of problems.  

2. HBS article on How to overcome the bias of our own ideas 

Ways to Live the Principle:

1. People’s decisions are more effective for WOG when they are independent of one another

   • Cast votes, and document opinions before you see how other people vote. Especially before you see how someone in a leadership position votes because we have a tendency to overweight the opinions of people who happen to be in leadership positions

   • If everyone lets himself be influenced by everyone else’s responses, there’s more chance that the responses will drift towards a misplaced bias 

2. Having an effective organization requires that you listen to and understand the merit of each person’s ideas.

   • We mostly overvalue our own ideas. 

     • We are better at evaluating our own ideas after some time, and if we review it from a different location (physical and mental) 

   • We overvalue manager’s ideas (relative to front line team members). 

3. Take into account each person’s believability about a specific topic 

   • Each person has different strengths and weaknesses. 

   • Believability Weight Your Decision Making. Not all people’s opinions are equally valuable. This is often unacknowledged in discussions.  Prevent this by looking at people’s track records, noting their credentials and evaluating how their arguments hold up when challenged 

   • Know when to keep your mouth shut.  

     • Imagine if a group of us were trying to learn how to play golf with Tiger Woods, and he and a new golfer were debating how to swing the club. Would it be helpful or harmful and plain silly to treat their points of view equally, because they have different levels of believability? It is better to listen to what Tiger Woods has to say, without constant interruptions by someone with significantly less experience arguing with him. 

   • If you can’t do or haven’t successfully done something, don’t think you can tell others how it should be done. 

4. Learn to differentiate between facts and stories

   • Everyone has opinions and they are often ungrounded.  

   • Most people confuse their opinions for facts. 

   • Facts are recordable by a video camera.  Stories are everything else 

   • Understand how people came by their opinions. 

     • If you ask someone a question, they will probably give you an answer, so think through to whom you should address your questions. 

     • Having everyone randomly probe everyone else is an unproductive waste of time. 

     • Beware of statements that begin with “I think that . . .” Just because someone thinks something doesn’t mean it’s true
       
       Watch this video to better understand how to separate fact and story. 

  5. Find the most believable people possible who disagree with you and try to understand their reasoning. 

• Think about people’s believability in order to assess the likelihood that their opinions are good. 

• Remember that believable opinions are most likely to come from people who have 

  • Successfully accomplished the thing in question at least three times, and 

  • Great explanations of the cause-effect relationships that lead them to their conclusions 

• If someone hasn’t done a particular thing but has a theory that seems logical and can be stress-tested, then by all means test it. 

• Don’t pay as much attention to people’s conclusions as to the reasoning that led them to their conclusions. 

• Inexperienced people can have great ideas too, sometimes far better ones than more experienced people. 

• Everyone should be up-front in expressing how confident they are in their thoughts 

 6. Recognize that everyone has the right and responsibility to try to make sense of important things.

• Communications aimed at getting the best answer should involve the most relevant people and remove the least relevant people 

• Communication aimed at educating or boosting cohesion should involve a broader set of people than would be needed if the aim were just getting the best answer. 

• Recognize that you don’t need to make judgments about everything.  People will pay more attention to you if you only have judgments in areas in which you know what you are talking about.  

• Your own desire to make sense of things should be countered by being respectful of others time. 

  • It’s your responsibility to teach you how to make sense of things. 

  • Ask others only after you’ve done your own research 

  • If someone else appears frustrated with your questions, step back to understand what your 100% responsibility is. 

 7. Pay more attention to whether the decision-making system is fair than whether you get your way 

"Disagree and Commit" is a phrase often used for this.  

2. Make and Honor Commitments

Overview

• Commitments are a declaration made for a specific individual to take a specified action by a specified date.

• Making and Honoring Commitments is a foundation for trust

• Here is a great way to build trust

  • State “I got this”

  • Back it up with transparent, easily visible documentation and action. We almost always use public Asana boards for this.

  • Renegotiate your commitment as soon as you realize you won't honor it. This means renegotiating before, not after, the documented due date. Failing to do this creates unpredictability in the organization, which leads to reduced efficiency and effectiveness.

Some questions to ponder

• How much time and effort do we waste following up on things that were supposed to have been done, but weren’t? How much more effective would our organizations be if we knew, with absolute certainty, that what was promised would be done?

Science:

• The Sense of Commitment

• How to build trust

• Building a trust factory

• The Accountability Effect - positive impact on achieving goals
  
  

Ways to Live the Principle:

1. Create impeccable shared agreements 

   • When teams create impeccable shared agreements, they get far more done in less time and with less drama 

   • There is a framework for creating shared agreements 

   • Commitments consists of a documented action to be taken, a single owner of that action, and a due date 

     • Two owners is the same as none 

   • Commitments can also include 

     • The amount of time you expect to spend on that activity 

     • The expected result 

     • Anything that crystalizes the meaning of the commitment 

   • Tools like Asana are incredibly effective for documenting shared agreements 

   • Creating impeccable share agreements helps to ensure that two people don't lose sleep over any one problem.  This increases overall energy levels and focus of the organization 

 2. 100% of drama is due to lack of a shared agreement on an outcome and a plan to get there 

• Creating impeccable shared agreements is critical 

  • Much drama is created by people who think they are making shared agreements but then fail to document them clearly enough 

• Agreements can be weaponized. Don't do that.

• Transparency is key to creating trusting relationships 

• Inaccurate or out of date plans, inaccurate statuses both indicate a failure to honor the plan 

• The more fact (and less story) we have, the easier it is to create a shared agreement 

  • Process flow diagrams are incredibly good at creating fact 

 3. Hold yourself and your people accountable and appreciate them for holding you accountable 

• If you’ve agreed with someone that something is supposed to go a certain way, make sure it goes that way—unless you get in sync about doing it differently. 

• Watch out for the unfocused and unproductive theoretical “should.” 

 4. Recognize that honoring and fulfilling are two different things 

• Renegotiate commitments that you are unable to make as soon as you know that you are unable to honor that commitment.  Indicate 

  • What happened 

  • why you are asking to renegotiate 

  • What new shared agreement you’d like to make 

• Escalate when you can’t adequately handle your responsibilities 

• Make sure that the people who work for you are proactive about doing the same. 

  • Remember that the people who understand the truth the best are the most likely to succeed 

  • This includes proper introspection about your own strengths, weaknesses and where you are in your learning curve 

• Distinguish between a failure in which someone broke their “contract” and a failure in which there was no contract to begin with. The 2nd is equally your fault 

 5. Ask for help.  Don't make excuses.  Recover from mistakes 

• Asking for help when you need it is a sign of strength and confidence 

• When you fall short of an agreement, don’t make an excuse. Just say “I dropped the ball here” 

• How to apologize: Quickly, specifically, sincerely 

 6. Beware of overcommitting 

• You should hold the entirety of your commitments in a single location so you can effectively say no if you believe you are overcommitted.  Asana is the best tool for this

  • While this may be temporarily the right thing to do, be careful that it does not become permanent.

• A commitment to periodic rest and renovation increases your likelihood of achieving your other commitments  

7. Watch out for “job slip” 

• People have a tendency to do work that others should be doing.  

• This is most often seen when a manager steps in for a direct report and does not relinquish the responsibility back 

8. Organization-wide goals should be ambitious 

• When setting organization-wide goals, make ambitious commitments.  

• We expect to achieve 70% of our key objectives. 

  • Any more than that and we aren’t trying hard enough.  

  • Less than that indicates that we don’t understand reality 

• Setting goals is key to building our predictive powers as an organization 

• Work for goals that you and your organization are excited about. 

  • Think about how your tasks connect to those goals 

• Recognize that everyone has too much to do. 

  • Don’t get frustrated. Communicate.  Prioritize 

  • Prioritization is easy when you use workflow tools like Asana. It’s extremely hard if you don’t 

• Optimize for the efficiency of the organization not the individuals 

  • Many people believe that their efficiency is what matters most. This is incorrect.  We are optimizing for the efficiency of the organization.  Sometimes this means, as individuals, taking the time to communicate via our standard workflow tools. 

  • Using workflow tools that are visible, transparent and easy to follow enables coordination and consistency 

  • Take into account cognitive fluency - don’t overwhelm, put detail into a footnote or link 

Examples at Stride:

1.  Creating and Honoring Critical Success Factors

2. Be on time for appointments, phone calls and meetings both internally and externally

3. Invest in Ourselves and Each Other

Overview

Invest in Ourselves and Each Other means that Stride is a platform for both personal and professional growth.

We aim to create an environment where individuals can express their intentions or goals and there is a culture of both accountability and encouragement to succeed.

Science:

The Accountability Effect - positive impact on achieving goals

Ways to Live the Principle:

1. Celebrate wins.  Celebrate Each other

• Give shout outs and appreciations 

• When gift giving, keep in mind the recipient. Taking the time to create a personal gift is worth it 

  • The phrase “money can’t buy happiness” is backed by sound scientific research, above a certain level (~$75K annual household income). 

    • Below that level, often the best gift is either money or, better, get them something that they were already going to purchase themselves 

    • Above that level, more money doesn’t increase happiness but being appreciated does. Spend the time to do something unique and personal 

2. End Gossip 

   • End gossip. It no longer serves a purpose (it did in prehistoric days). Talk directly with people with whom you have an issue or concern and encourage others to talk directly with people with whom they have an issue or concern  

     • Don’t listen to others who gossip. 

     • Don’t say things about other people that you would not say to them 

 3. Live a life of appreciation 

• Be fully open to both giving and accepting appreciation.  

  • It's sometimes a challenge but learning to both give and accept appreciation leads to long term increases in happiness 

• Treasure honorable people who are capable and will treat you well even when you’re not looking. 

• Gratitude will unlock all other virtues and is something you can get better at. 

 4. Commit to living in your genius zone 

• Commit to living in your Genius Zone, a place where you feel flow. 

  • Realize that the danger of living life outside of your Genius Zone takes tremendous energy and is not helpful to anyone, not you, not the organization you work for, not your friends and family 

  • Realize that it is quite hard to make this commitment - family, society and our egos often steers us away 

    • Face your fears or you'll be stuck in a local maximum 

• Focus on continually improving self-awareness. Regard every interaction as an opportunity to learn 

  • There are various ways to find your genius zone 

    • The first questions you need to ask 

    • Document your Energy Gains and Energy Drains. 

      • Do this weekly or even daily 

      • Look for patterns 

      • Work with your supervisor to find ways to have you spend more time in your GZ and remove the energy drains 

• Write out 6-10 stories about yourself 

  • The stories should be where you had this intersection 

    • You felt you were in the flow 

    • The world said "you're amazing at this" 

  • Look for the common patterns 

• Do a Genius Campaign 

 5. Create Win for All Situations 

• Focus on creating Win For All situations (win for you, win for the other person, win for the organization, and win for the whole) for whatever issues, problems, concerns or opportunities life gives. This increases energy levels all around 

• Give more than you take 

  • Know where the line is and be on the far side of fair.

  • Pay for work 

 6. Take your 100% responsibility 

• Take full responsibility for the circumstances of your life and your physical, emotional, mental and spiritual well-being. 

  • Use the 100% responsibility framework 

  • Support others to take full responsibility for their lives 

  • Taking responsibility means asking for help in areas where you are weak. It does not mean that you need to shoulder burdens on your own 

• See that your commitments show up not in what you say but in the outcomes that you get. 

  • AKA you are unconsciously committed to the outcomes you get 

    • Generally, the more you protest that you aren't committed to the outcome you are getting, the more committed you actually are to achieving that outcome 

 7. Raises and promotions are given to those who create value 

• Rewards (such as promotions, raises, etc.) are given to people who create value for the organization 

  • Watch for and support people who step up and ask for growth opportunities 

  • People who say "I'll do X but only if you do Y for me first" rarely will do X well or for long. 

  • Even if it feels good, don’t give off cycle raises unless it’s done in conjunction with a promotion. This promotes the “squeaky wheel” syndrome and becomes corrosive to company culture 

4. Empowerment Leads to Better Results and a Happier Life

Overview 

At its most basic level, empowerment comes from understanding and trusting the Principles. If you are following the Principles, everything will work out. If you don’t, there will be massive variation in outcome

• The idea of empowerment is to create an environment where employees are more engaged because they have autonomy to do their job.

• Generally, employees that feel empowered have a higher likelihood of thriving, of enjoying their work, and staying around.

• If you are empowering someone to achieve their goal, your job is no longer to achieve the goal.

  • Rather it is to support and train the person so that they can achieve the goal.

  • This is the difference between empowering someone to do work and assigning someone work while maintaining the responsibility for it

• One of the most common mistakes in management is to delegate work and think that you are empowering. This backfires.

• The most successful people at empowerment figure out how to make everything about the other person.

  • How can you help this person achieve their goals in life, while also getting the outcomes you are looking for

Science:

When empowering employees works and doesn’t 

Ways to Live the Principle:

1. Use the Principles to empower 

   • Make and honor commitments: It is important to communicate expectations and have measurable progress points. 

   • Use the 6 step process: Most people skip steps 1, 2 and 3 then wonder why things aren’t going that well. 

   • Get and stay in synch: everyone on the team needs to have the tools available to make themselves successful.   

     • It should be clear where to go with any issues - what the process is and who to contact. By sharing the goals and direction, the team is united in the same direction.  

     • Training should happen before the assignment of the tasks when possible so the assignee is comfortable with the plan 

     • Resolve context issues before talking content 

   • Hire right and train people: Realize that everyone has different skill levels and needs varying degrees of guidance. People should be pushed slightly outside of their comfort zone but not too far. 

   • If people are frozen and stop taking action, you’ve asked too much of them 

   • Trust in radical truth and transparency: if you haven’t fostered this dynamic, empowerment will lead to hiding from reality. All parties must be comfortable embracing reality and sharing their true thoughts and feelings

   • Applaud people who ask questions - it’s a sign of strength and confidence to ask questions, especially the “I don’t understand this” variety 

   • It is OK to make mistakes: Realize that with empowerment comes mistakes.  Accept this.  Your role is not to make sure that [X] gets done correctly.  It is to train the person so that they will consistently and reliably get [X] done correctly in the future. 

 2. How NOT to empower 

• Do not ‘Hero’ the other person. Taking control back undermines the other person and shows that you do not have confidence in them

  • The inevitable consequence of heroing is villain and victimhoood 

• Do not micro- manage or piecemeal the instructions.  

  • Empowerment requires that all involved parties know the end goal and the route to get there. By involving everyone in the 6 step process for setting and achieving goals, there is full transparency 

  • While this takes more time in the short term, it creates a more powerful working relationship for the long term 

 3. Help people pull work; don't push it 

• Empowerment is about supporting people to pull work towards them rather than having you push work onto them. 

  • When people choose what to do and when, empowerment ensues.    

  • When people opt-in to their jobs - they want to fill up their day with what serves them and serves the end goals of the company.   

  • Understand the other person’s expectations of your role and act accordingly. 

    • For example, does a teammate like daily check ins? Or do perform better when left alone except in times of issues? 

      • Some people will feel neglected if left to their own devices. 

      • Others may feel that regular check-ins are micro-managing.  

      • A person’s preference must be factored together with their effectiveness - if they prefer to be left alone but you perceive they need daily training, then a balance must be struck and agreed upon by both parties 

 4. How the supervisor's role changes with empowerment 

• Remember that empowerment means that you are no longer focused on trying to get the optimal outcome, from your perspective. Rather, it’s to guide the other person in learning how to handle the tasks in question.  

• If you successfully empower and follow our Principles, e.g. the 6 step process, we help ensure that only one person loses sleep over any one problem. 

• Assume any issues are related to the system or process rather than the person.   Were the expectations clearly communicated?  Use the 6 step process to diagnose the root cause of the issue and solve it. 

5. Have and Practice Empathy

Overview:

What empathy is: Empathy is the ability to step into the shoes of another person, aiming to understand their feelings and perspectives, and to use that understanding to guide our actions. That makes it different from kindness or pity.

• And don’t confuse it with the Golden Rule, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” As George Bernard Shaw pointed out, “Do not do unto others as you would have them do unto you—they might have different tastes.” Empathy is about discovering those tastes.

What empathy isn’t: agreeing with someone else. You can have empathy for someone else (understanding their story) without agreeing with their story. Having empathy for someone you already agree with is easy; having empathy for someone you disagree with is what we are striving for

• This is where Conscious Leadership Commitments come into play

Science:

The science of empathy

Reading literary fiction increases empathy

6 habits of highly empathic people

Ways to Live the Principle:

• Ways to have and learn empathy 

  • Realize that everyone that you will ever meet knows something you don’t

  • Cultivate curiosity about strangers - and listen to them! 

  • Challenge prejudices and discover commonalities.  

  • Most of what we believe are stories, not facts, and everyone has a different story. Learn to separate your facts from your stories.  Think through the other person’s story 

  • Practice conscious listening 

    • Rule of 3 in conversation. To get to the real reason, ask a person to go deeper than what they just said. Then again, and once more. The third time’s answer is close to the truth. 

  • Don't put the responsibility on the client for work or information that you can get yourself. One of our main jobs is to free up their time 

  • Respect people’s time. 

    • Avoid open ended questions unless you are specifically in a brainstorming session 

    • Prepare for meetings 

Working with Difficult Clients and/or Teammates:

Something to think about...

It's important to remember that everyone is just doing the best they can. When someone is being difficult, it's typically because there's a threat to their identity or ego. When we feel threatened, we act in ways that aren't collaborative. When you're dealing with someone who is being difficult, employ the empathy technique: imagine you're dealing with your brother, dad, or daughter and ask yourself, "how would I want others around them to treat them?" It's a great shift move. If someone is being really reactive, try to ask good questions in the moment and really listen --- a lot of times, people just feel frustrated that they're not being heard. Ask the person what's not working, and let them know you're listening.

6. Embrace Reality and Deal With It

Overview:

The only way to learn how things truly are is to push yourself to action. Once we have acted in the world you can start to see how it acts back. Does it conform to our assumptions? No? Then we’ve just learned by embracing reality.

Science:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tfrrubw7pcE&ab_channel=PrinciplesbyRayDalio 

Ways to Live the Principle:

1. Truth is essential for good outcomes

Truth—or, more precisely, an accurate understanding of reality —is the essential foundation for any good outcome

How can we do this? Ground our stories with fact.

Facts are recordable by a video camera. Story is everything else. Learn to differentiate between the two

2. Pain + Reflection = Progress. 

   • Embrace tough love. Shying away from giving honest feedback to a teammate is doing them a disservice.  Learn to do this with grace and empathy.

   • Go to the pain rather than avoid it

   • Constructive feedback should be delivered with empathy, usually after fully listening to and understanding the other person’s perspective

   • Err on the side of more feedback sessions

   • Be self reflective and ensure that your team is self-reflective

   • Know that nobody can see themselves objectively

   • Teach and reinforce the merits of mistake based learning

 3. Weigh second- and third-order consequences.

• The analogy is eating cake for breakfast, lunch and dinner. You wouldn’t do that because the downstream impacts are negative.  Think through why you eat broccoli.  Apply that thinking to decision making everywhere

 4. Look at the machine from the higher level.

• Think of yourself as a machine operating within a machine and know that you have the ability to alter your machines to produce better outcomes. 

• By comparing your outcomes with your goals, you can determine how to modify your machine.

• Distinguish between you as the designer of your machine and you as a worker with your machine. 

• If you are open-minded enough and determined, you can get virtually anything you want.

 5. We all have strengths and weaknesses

• The biggest mistake most people make is to not see themselves and others objectively, which leads them to bump into their own and others’ weaknesses again and again.

• Successful people are those who can go above themselves to see things objectively and manage those things to shape change.

• Asking others who are strong in areas where you are weak to help you is a great skill that you should develop no matter what, as it will help you develop guardrails that will prevent you from doing what you shouldn’t be doing. 

• Because it is difficult to see oneself objectively, you need to rely on the input of others and the whole body of evidence. 

 6. Being busy is very time consuming

• The less Work in Progress we have open at any given time, the faster we will get that work successfully completed

• Swarm bottlenecks. Every service business has a similar throughput model: Generate Leads -> Close Deals -> Implement -> Long Term Success.  If any one area is a clear bottleneck relative to the others, shift relevant resources from other projects to swarming the problem

7. Follow the 6 Step Process to Get What You Want out of Life

6-Step Process

Overview:

There is a standard formulaic process that increases the probability of success of achieving what you want in life.

The 6 Step Process applies in virtually every situation. The only difference is in how intensely you apply the framework.

Big goal? Get really deep, use white boards, leverage the Wisdom of the Group, etc.

Smaller goal? Maybe just step through the process in your favorite note taking tool, taking care to step back and breathe and reflect between each step to make sure you aren't rushing it.

Following this process will help you avoid huge amounts of wasted time working on Solutions that weren't as tightly tied to your true Goal as you thought it was.

• Locate yourself - are you above or below the line?

  • Before you engage in any problem solving, locate yourself [https://www.youtube.com/watch?ab_channel=TheConsciousLeadershipGroup&v=fLqzYDZAqCI] - are you Above the Line (ATL) or Below the Line ( BTL)?

Depending upon where you are, different parts of the brain will be activated. Here's a little cheat sheet [https://www.dropbox.com/s/6m5wvn9r0yjo3uh/CLG-Locating%20Yourself.pdf?dl=1] to help you figure out where you are.

When you are ATL, you will be primarily engaging your neocortex, the logic center of your brain

When you are BTL, you will be primarily engaging the reptile part of the brain, the part responsible for autonomous and repetitive functions like breathing. This part of the brain isn't effective at creative thinking. It is highly effective at routine processing e.g. breathing.

As a result, we will get better results when we are engaging in Wisdom of the Group or any other creative thinking when we are Above the Line.

If Below the Line

If you locate yourself and find that you are below the line, celebrate that! This is an incredibly important step of the journey towards understanding the difference between Content and Context [https://conscious.is/video/content-vs-context]. Most people go through their entire lives without ever knowing where they are located.

Now, it's time for you to focus on shifting your context. To do this

1) Remember that there is no good nor bad, right nor wrong place to be. You are below the line and the most important thing is to recognize this and act accordingly.

2) Excuse yourself from any group interaction. Your job now is to focus on shifting your context so that you can get out of the Drama Triangle and be fully present [https://conscious.is/video/understanding-the-drama-triangle-vs-presence]

3) Focus on shifting yourself to Above the Line. A great place to start is

a) Ground your story with fact. Write out the Facts (recordable by a video camera). Then write out the Story you are telling yourself. Preface each sentence of paragraph with where you are coming from (Victim, Villain, Hero). This helps you see how much of what you previously thought was fact is actuall story

b) If you are willing to shift, go through the Willingness Questions. try this by yourself. or it's often helpful to enlist the support of others, who, if trained in this, can often help you see perspectives that are currently invisible to you

When you've shifted, and your head, heart and gut are all saying "Yes, I feel wholly Above the Line", now you are ready to move on to the specific challenge you are facing.

If Above the Line

Great, you are ready to approach this exercise from a conscious perspective, choosing curiosity over being right [https://conscious.is/video/are-you-choosing-curiosity-over-being-right] and being willinig to acknowledge your 100% responsibility [https://conscious.is/video/are-you-taking-100-responsibility]. Continue on to Step 2.

• Create clear goals

 1. Prioritize: While you can have virtually anything you want, you can’t have everything you want.

 2. Don’t confuse goals with desires. There are needs and there are wants. Satisfying the core needs reduces the want for wants

3. Decide what you really want in life by reconciling your goals and your desires.

4. Never rule out a goal because you think it’s unattainable.

5. Remember that great expectations create great capabilities.

6. Almost nothing can stop you from succeeding if you have a) flexibility and b) self-accountability.

 7. Knowing how to deal well with your setbacks is as important as knowing how to move forward.

• Identify and diagnose problems to get at their root causes

  • Distinguish irritants from accelerants. Irritants are rarely worth dealing with because enough accelerants eliminate the pain of the irritants.

  • View painful problems as potential improvements that are screaming at you.

  • Don’t avoid confronting problems because they are rooted in harsh realities that are unpleasant to look at

  • Be specific in identifying your problems.

  • Don’t mistake a symptom of a problem with the real problem

  • Once you identify a problem, don’t tolerate it. Enlist the support of the Wisdom of the Group, swarm it and solve it

  • Only one person should lose sleep over any specific problem

  • Focus on the “what is” before deciding “what to do about it.”

  • Distinguish proximate causes from root causes.

  • Use the 5 Whys to get at root causes

  • Identify any principles that were violated

  • Don’t solution too quickly because it locks us into whatever our preconceived notion was via Consistency Bias

  • Use frameworks to simplify complex things. E,g. complex business decisions can often be simplified by separating upside from downside

• Design a plan

 1. Think about your problem as a set of outcomes produced by a machine. So start with the end in mind and work backwards from there

 2. Know that most problems have already been solved, many times over. go find those solutions and learn from them

3. Remember that there are typically many paths to achieving your goals. It often requires experimentation to figure out what works best. If you’ve done a good job identifying the root cause of the problem, you can often iterate quickly on potential plans / solutions

4. Consider what principles could be created or modified to eliminate this problem in the future

5. Think of your plan as being like a movie script in that you visualize who will do what through time.

• Write down your plan for everyone to see and to measure your progress against.

• It doesn’t take a lot of time to design a good plan.

6. A plan is not complete without

• A clear objective

• Success metrics, including mid stream metrics

• Granular tasks with owners and due dates

  • One owner only. Two owners is the same as one owner

• Feedback loops

7. Design is an iterative process. Between a bad “now” and a good “then” is a “working through it” period.

8. After your first pass, go through and look for the critical path items. Work to reduce

• Run as much in parallel as possible e.g. don’t wait until you’ve done the work to schedule a meeting. Rather, schedule enough time to get the work done and, at the same time, schedule a meeting to review the work, hopefully for the following day

• The more days a plan takes to complete, the more hours it will take. In that, at each working session, you will need to spend time putting the project details back into your working memory

9. Take into account other projects that are happening simultaneously

• The more Work in Progress items, the longer each of them will take.

• Fewer active projects means higher overall velocity

• Push through to completion

  • Great planners who don’t execute their plans go nowhere.

  • Good work habits are vastly underrated. Dependability is an important trait

• Iterate

  • No plan is 100% complete, no outcome is 100% perfect. So assume that you’ll want to iterate

  • Build a high level plan for your first iteration into your initial plan. It doesn’t have to be perfect or complete.  It mostly ensures that you won’t forget to measure results and iterate. 

Further Readings

Comparing the 6 Step Process and the Scientific Method

There have been some questions about why we don't use the Scientific Method. This post attempts to explain how we actually do, using business vs scientific terms, with some differences.

First, here's a great Khan Academy primer on the Scientific Method.

Step 1 of Scientific Method: Observations

Notice how the scientific method starts with an observation: the toaster won't toast. That's a great scientific observation and all that is needed for pure science, where the objective is simply to learn.

However, in business, we have to generate enough revenue to pay salaries and other expenses. As a result, we have some more constraints.

Some examples

• Is this an observation that is relevant to the business? Businesses need a Goal and the more we center our work towards meeting the Goal, the better off we all are.

  • We also want to make sure we are spending time working on the right goals. Is this really a priority today or just some interesting observation? This is why we have OKRs, to help us focus on the most important goals

• Are we approaching this from a place of curiosity or is our observation actually centered around a desire to be right? That's why we have Locate Yourself as Step 1.

Step 2 of Scientific Method: Ask a Question

This is another way of saying 'what are the potential problems, step 3 of the 6 step process.

but the 6 Step process doesn't stop there. Why? Again, because we are a business that is interested in solving the most important problems, not merely the interesting.

So we root cause the problem.

Note that the scientific method is a wonderful way of diagnosing the problem. Ask questions. lots of them. And remember the 5 whys. channel your inner 4 year old!

Step 3 of Scientific Method: Propose a Hypothesis

This is simply the planning stages done well. Before you deeply plan, we always want to be developing a hypothesis.

Step 4 of Scientific Method: Make Predictions

This is also simply the planning stages done well. Before you deeply plan, we always want to be making falsifiable predictions about the outcome so we can learn. A simple example of this is how we predict what we will get accomplished in a given month e.g. we will conduct these specific State of Relationship calls, we will complete these Implementation Milestones, etc.

This gives us a deeper understanding of reality.

Steps 5 and 6 of Scientific Method: Test Predictions & Iterate

This is the same thing as Step 6 of the 6 Step process

Summary

I hope this helps folks understand the tie between the 6 step process and the scientific method. I urge you to think about the scientific method as you go through the 6 steps. The more scientific we are in our approach, with the deviations I mentioned above, the faster we will learn, grow and achieve our Purpose.

Science and Articles

Does Decision Process Matter

Applications:

1. Using Miro to Build a 6-Step Process

Miro is a whiteboarding application that is ideal for mapping out a 6-step process.  We use Miro to "mind map" or brainstorm the problems that are keeping us from our goals.  Once we arrive at some solution ideas from the exercise, it is then that we move to Asana to build the project plan.  Watch this video!

https://www.loom.com/share/c115818a3a9b46dca305ffed14d8eb4c?sid=76116633-cdc9-4099-a263-778f1822b997

 2. Documenting Key Learnings in Asana

We have a project in Asana called, "Key Learnings".  This is where we document what we have learned from a client interaction, lost prospect, customer development call, etc..  By having a place for Key Learnings, we honor Step 6 of the 6-step process (learn and iterate) and get the benefit of WOG as we devise ways to take that learning and improve.  We invite you to share your Key Learnings for continuous improvement at Stride

https://www.loom.com/share/44777044ac0244d4915e966880079c78?sid=e7145c70-0590-4cf1-9723-cc32908e8e9e

https://www.loom.com/share/dcf7adb8957848fcb18190b214fdf125?sid=dc87c5c4-7193-4cf4-a917-492eb74e16be 

8. It is Okay to Make Mistakes -- Unacceptable Not to Learn from Them

Overview:

High performing cultures have an environment where mistakes are not only allowed but encouraged, on one condition -- that there is learning from that mistake in order to avoid it happening in the future.

If you are not falling down occasionally, you are just coasting.

“If you’re committed to progress, you can’t very well claim to have it all figured out”

- Steve Pinker

Science:

Why Mistakes Matter in Creating a Path for Learning

Ways to Live the Principle:

1. Mistakes are a natural part of the learning process

   • Don’t feel bad about your mistakes or those of others

   • We don’t complain or make fun about toddlers bumping into furniture. Know that we are all toddling our way through life, perhaps more advanced but accept that we are just like toddlers when it comes to learning new things

   • As a result, we don't view mistakes the same way as others do, as a negative word. Rather, we view the recognition of mistakes as an incredible positive - we are now allowed to grow as humans and as an organization

   • Everything can be viewed with this lens, up to and including Principles. In fact, Principles are always in motion and an important part of everyone's job is to challenge the Principles, point out where they could be improved or nuanced. And, very importantly, point out when you make up a story that they are wrong! There's a decent chance that you'll get agreement from many other. Worst case, we will all learn something,

 2. Have a bias for action 

• Have a bias for action for any reversible decision. If you can walk back a decision, often times, taking an action will tell you if you are right or wrong faster than detailed analyzing. 

 3. Get granular and specific with mistakes

•  It is essential that the diagnosis connects the mistakes to the specific individuals and processes by name

•  As such, it is imperative that we never blame people for making mistakes.

  • Otherwise we will build a culture where people are afraid to embrace the reality of who, specifically, made the mistake and therefore who, specifically, needs either training and/or needs to be involved in improving the process

9. Get and Stay in Synch

Video Tutorial for "Get and Stay in Sync"

Here is a video tutorial on how to use the "Sync Up" framework to get and stay in sync with your colleagues and clients.

Here is a link to the sync up sheet: 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1DnmGa3bdVySnHe1Uo1QoLrJ-C1oC24h5YfkAWPm5eiw/edit?usp=sharing 

https://www.loom.com/share/e2f9d629825142bd9eca6e288a2d6144?sid=506f91b1-1f9c-4fec-8408-14535d4c61d3 

Overview 

• Assume good intentions

• Work on context before content

• 100% of drama in life is due to a lack of an impeccable Shared Agreement

• Differentiate between facts, stories and feelings

• Practice the 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership

• Don’t be afraid to ask a question that may sound stupid because 99% of the time everyone else is thinking of the same question and is too embarrassed to ask it.

• Being able to listen well is a superpower. While listening to someone you love keep asking them “Is there more?”, until there is no more.

Science:

• Conscious Leadership

• Radical Transparency

Ways to Live the Principle:

1. Sync Up

One of the Stride Principles is “GET AND STAY IN SYNC”. How do we do that? By making sure we are communicating with each other and our clients with integrity (how we feel is aligned with what we say). Here is the framework that we believe is most likely to get two or more people in synch with each other.

Getting and staying in sync can sometimes feel uncomfortable (either on the delivery or receiving end) but it doesn’t have to. As people get comfortable with this framework, it actually becomes energizing.

If you do this right, at the end you'll feel much closer and more connected to the other person. If you don't, it's often because you aren't in full integrity with yourself. In that, you likely held back some of your thoughts.

Commit to trying it and share the results. When starting, it's often very helpful to have a 3rd party who has practiced this framework before many times. Don't be afraid to ask for help!

Here is a Sync Up worksheet for you to use. This is a 'read only' document but you can create a copy and customize it for you specific purpose/sync up meeting:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1njyVqGVsbffCxi_KkMKw55IhidiI4fPU8zcAGV1Fhrc/edit

Person 1: Start by unpacking the issue, separating “fact” “fiction” and “feelings”!

“I’m noticing an issue with you and I would like to get clear about this. Is now a good time? - If not now, schedule a time!

“I am clearing this issue because you, and our relationship, are important to me.” - Affirm the supportive relationship you desire.

“The specific facts are …” - Recordable data; not judgments

“The fictional story I make up about these facts is…” - Your judgment, opinion, analysis, belief… the dark story you make up about the facts.

“When I think about this, I feel…” - Pick one! Angry, Sad, Joyful, Afraid,Also consider: Ashamed, Guilty, Numb

“My part in this is…” - How your dysfunctional behaviors, sabotaging patterns, chronic compulsions, protective strategies…all help create and sustain the issue.

“And, I specifically want…” - Desires, requests, proposals, release/let go… not actions.

Person 2: The Other Person responds. (This say may be you if a client initiated the discussion)

“Let me see if I understand you…” - Reflect or paraphrase without interpretation. Get to the most pertinent data. The “darkest” story. The core emotion. The biggest want.

“Is that accurate?” - Be silent for a moment. If not accurate, ask the person to help get to accuracy. Help the person express their want.

“Is There More? What else do you want to get out?” - This is a crucial question. Ask in a kind, genuine, curious, want-to-be-in-relationship voice.

“Are you clear about this?” - “Clear” does not mean “resolved” or “fixed”. “Clear” indicates “heard”. If yes, appreciate one another!.

Trade places as necessary. Once both parties are clear, clean it up!

Offer and Counter-Offer - Develop options on how to resolve the real issue.

Apologies and Amends - Offer meaningful apology. Feel fully. Generate some self-compassion for being where you are. Ask, “How can I make it right?”

Systems, Structure, and Norms Reflection - What systems (ways of doing things), structures (environments, tools, relationships), or norms (agreements for outcomes, agenda, roles, responsibilities) might be put in place or changed?

Some Tips

1. Don't interrupt. Let the person finish

2. Listen deeply with curiosity

3. If you find yourself triggered / defensive, step back and reflect as to why. Take a deep breath and assess how those words the other person spoke were true before defending yourself.

Additional videos & tutorials:

• What’s the difference between revealing & concealing? https://conscious.is/video/candor-are-you-revealing-or-concealing

• Shifting from BTL to ATL via revealing: https://conscious.is/video/shifting-an-issue-by-revealing

• The Sync-Up process and how to apply it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qtJ87WTPNY

Related videos

• Defining emotional intelligence: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aV9B3J4W7cI

• How to view everything as an ally (things aren’t happening through you not to you): https://conscious.is/video/seeing-people-and-circumstances-and-allies

• Are you willing to feel your feelings? https://conscious.is/video/are-you-willing-to-feel-your-feelings

• What it means to live/communicate with integrity: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFbcOn0dIrI

• Additional information about the 4 pillars of integrity: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50BsBePG89s

 2. Assume good intentions

• Assume good intentions. 

• If you can’t do this, a healthy relationship becomes quite difficult

• When assessing an unhealthy relationship, do your own self reflection first. 

  • If you don't see how you are committed to this outcome, you are not ready for a Synch Up with the other person 

 3. Context before Content

•  Recognize that context [https://conscious.is/video/content-vs-context] (e.g. how we are making a decision) needs to be solved first, then you can focus on content (what decision we are making)

  • Knowing where you are [https://conscious.is/video/locating-yourself-a-key-to-conscious-leadership] (above or below the line) is necessary to progress in life

    • Avoid making decisions when below the line

    • Don’t try to force yourself above the line; if you don’t honor your BTL thoughts and feelings, any ATL moments will be temporary and likely not even r

    • In figuring out where you are, use the concept of the Drama Triangle [https://conscious.is/video/understanding-the-drama-triangle-vs-presence]

  • Synch Ups [https://docs.google.com/document/d/1DnmGa3bdVySnHe1Uo1QoLrJ-C1oC24h5YfkAWPm5eiw/edit#] are the most effective way of ensuring that people are sharing a similar context.

    • Get comfortable having Synch Ups with anybody. Use it for niggles so that it’s not a big deal when something more major pops up

4. Differentiate between facts, stories and feelings 

   • Learn the difference between facts, stories and feelings. The majority of what most people call facts are actually stories 

     • Facts are things recordable by a camera. These are indisputable 

       • If somebody is disputing a fact, it’s likely not a fact. 

     • Stories are just about everything else we tell ourselves. Every story has another side. 

     • Feelings are how we feel. There are 5 core feelings: anger, fear, sadness, joy and sexual / creative 

5. Practice the 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership 

   • Practicing the 15 commitments of Conscious Leadership is incredibly effective at ensuring we each have the proper context through which to get and stay in synch. Learn to 

     • Take your 100% responsibility. Neither more nor less 

     • Choose curiosity over being right 

     • Feel all of your feelings. Be vulnerable. It’s contagious. One genuine admission of struggle makes it OK for others 

     • Practice radical candor. Learn how to reveal, not conceal. 

       • The truth is there whether we acknowledge it or not. Acknowledging it allows us to solve it, including by enlisting support from others 

     • Avoid gossip. Only say things about people that you are comfortable with them hearing 

     • Be in integrity with your agreements. Especially your self-agreement to live your life the way you see fit 

       • Don’t let loyalty to people stand in the way of truth and the well-being of the organization. 

       • Speak up.  Be extremely open.  Be radically transparent. 

       • Share the things that are hardest to share. 

     • Shift from entitlement to appreciation 

     • Get in, and stay in, your genius zone 

     • Take things in a playful manner 

       • F*cked is actually funny 

     • Understand and appreciate the opposite of your story 

     • Source approval, control and security from within 

     • Appreciate that you have enough, today, right now 

     • See everything and everyone as an ally 

     • Create win for all outcomes 

     • Be your own resolution to your problems 

6. If you are Below the Line, you aren’t listening or open to new ideas 

   • Step back and assess where you are. Share this with the other parties 

   • Don’t try to argue logic 

   • The reason they can’t truly listen is because the portion of the brain primarily being used (reptile) doesn’t have solid logic circuits. Think about when you are in “Fight or flight” mode 

7. Conflict is essential for great relationships 

   • Recognize that conflicts are essential for great relationships because they are how people determine whether their principles are aligned and resolve their differences. 

   • Avoiding conflict is a recipe for drama 

8. 100% of drama is lack of a shared agreement 

   • 100% of drama is due to lack of a shared agreement 

     • on a desired outcome and 

     • a plan to get there 

   • Document commitments. Get shared agreement.  

     • Use tools like Asana to document shared agreements because it is designed specifically for that purpose 

10. Hire Right and Continually Train People 

Overview 

Hiring right is a combination of hiring for fit and hiring for culture. We don’t just bring people on the team but we continue to train them (in both their area of responsibility as well as their cultural contribution) because a machine with a broken element begins to tear down the infrastructure.

Why? Because the penalties for doing it wrong are huge

Ways to Live the Principle:

1. It all starts with the interview

   • A recruit should meet his/her peers before giving an offer. This helps ensure compatibility with the team and increases the chances of successful onboarding [Needs more] 

 2. Onboard right

• Onboarding begins with the foundation, which is our Principles [Flush out] 

 3. Know what makes your team tick

• Know what your people are like and what makes them tick, because your people are your most important resource. 

  • Regularly take the temperature of each person who is important to you and to the organization. 

  • Learn how much confidence to have in your people—don’t assume it. Vary your involvement based on your confidence. 

• Match the person to the role. 

  • Think through which values, abilities, and skills you are looking for (in that order). 

  • Make finding the right people systematic and scientific. 

  • Hear the click: Find the right fit between the role and the person. 

  • Look for people who sparkle, not just “any ol’ one of those.” 

  • Don’t use your pull to get someone a job. 

 4. Think of it like a sports team 

• Think of your teams the way that sports managers do: No one person possesses everything required to produce success, yet everyone must excel. 

• Even the best professional athletes have coaches and practice. Spend time each week on practice - role practice conversations with clients, role practice email based communications.  Practice, practice, practice. 

Genius Zone System

IF YOU ARE THE REVIEWEE:

Start General

Step 1. How to Evaluate Energy Gains and Drains

• Review activities over the last 3 months that have been Energy Gains? Energy Drains?

• What are the roles / functions where you feel MOST alive and connected? How about where you feel LEAST alive and connected?

• Look at your calendar, time sheets, etc. to remind you of such items.

Step 2. How Much Time are you spending in your Genius Zone?

Fill in this field with your best estimate. Note that world class is around 70%. Think about it - is reading and responding to emails in your GZ? How about your sitting on a video call waiting for everyone else to join?

Step 3. Document Your Energy Gains and Drains

Once you've reviewed your last 3 months, it's time to summarize this information.

Then Get Specific

Step 4. Look specifically at areas of the AoR

Fill out the Drain/Gain/Neutral Column in this spreadsheet to identify:

• What are the areas in the AOR where you feel MOST alive and connected and the work seems effortless?

• What are the areas in the AOR where you feel LEAST alive and connected and the work seems like a drag?

🌑🌑🌑🌑🌑🌑🌑🌑🌑🌑🌑🌑🌑🌑🌑🌑🌑🌑🌑🌑🌑🌑🌑🌑🌑🌑🌑🌑

IF YOU ARE THE REVIEWER:

Step 1. LOCATE YOURSELF

Only proceed when you are fully Above the Line. This will not only be a waste of time, it will likely be damaging to your relationship. if you want support in getting Above the Line, ask for it.

Read these before every review you do

1. A summary on how to give great feedback.

2. Tips on how to tailor it based on the person's personality type

3. Can you see the opposite of your stories?

If you are feeling Below the Line, remember that you are unlikely to be successful in your goal, which is to support this individual in spending more time in their GZ.

Step 2. DoCUMENT THE REVIEWEE'S Expert Zones and areas for improvement

• Document what you see as the Reviewee's Expert Zones

  • Basically, you are the proxy for the rest of the world right now - what is this person really really good at? What are they not so good at?

• Fill in the fields Expert Zone and Areas for Improvement with the summary points

Other Key Tips

Be as specific as possible. Remember, all of us are good at and terrible at many things. If you don't tell people your story of what they aren't good at, you are denying them an opportunity to see what might be a blindspot of theirs.

Be in full integrity - completing this exercise with full integrity is one of the most valuable gifts that you can give to somebody. If you don't share with them what you see as their strengths and weaknesses, who will? Fight through any discomfort you feel - that's your Hero persona talking. You should feel light and clear after this. if not, you are likely out of integrity somewhere.

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FOR THE REVIEWER AND REVIEWEE:

Step 1. Meet Together

Next meet with your Supervisor to review the work.

1. Discuss any areas of disagreement. It often helps to ask others for their stories.

2. Create a shared agreement on:

   1. Your GZ and anti GZ. Document this in the Comments. It should largely be links to the Areas of Responsibility detailed items

   2. Your plan for the next quarter. What are you going to do to ensure you spend more time in your GZ? What support do you want and have you asked for it?

11. Be Relentless about Building the Impossibly Perfect Machine 

Overview :

People driven businesses are inherently variable and it is the primary reason why many are not able to growth and maintain quality. Our opportunity is to think of our business as a machine and continue to improve it and fortify the structure so that it is not (i) susceptible to catastrophic failure and (ii) can support rapid growth.

• An organization is a machine consisting of 3 major parts:

  • culture

  • people

  • process & systems

• A great organization has all 3

• Great people have both great character and great capabilities

• Great cultures bring problems and disagreements to the surface and solve them well, and they love imagining and building great things that haven’t been built before.

• A well designed system should break automatically if something is not going as planned

• To make something good, just do it. To make something great, just re-do it, re-do it, re-do it. The secret to making fine things is in remaking them.

Ways to Live the Principle:

1.  Start with the goal

   • The goal of your Impossibly Perfect Machine should be whatever you want it to be. Overall, it generally means 

     • 100% thrilled clients, who have complete transparency into the work we do and all of the work we do for them is done 100% accurately and is completed just slightly ahead of time. 

     • 100% thrilled team, who is doing what they love, who finishes their work during regular hours, and never has to touch the same piece of work twice. 

 2. Start slow but get moving. 

• Your machine should be calibrated first to do the job correctly, even if slowly. Only then should you focus on increasing throughput

• Just because you can’t do everything doesn’t mean that you can’t start with something.  

  • Don’t wait until all the resources you need are available. Prepare yourself so that, when the resources do become available, you are 100% ready to make use of them 

 3. Look down from a higher level

• Look down on your machine and yourself within it from the higher level. 

  • Constantly compare your outcomes to your goals

  • Understand that a great manager is essentially an organizational engineer.

  • Build metrics that show you the status of your machine as it relates to its goals

  • Don’t just focus on problems. Problems tell us what not to do.  Looking at what is working tells us what to do.  This is equally important and often overlooked 

 4. Balance between machine building and doing 

• Create a balance between machine building and doing. Some rules of thumb 

  • Managers should be spending 20-30% of their time on machine building 

  • Front line team has the primary responsibility for identifying issues and should be spending 5-10% of their time on machine building 

• Assume that you are not involved in the doing, even if you will be. 

  • This will help ensure solid documentation

  • This will highlight assumptions in your head that may or may not be accurate 

 5. Two purposes: move the ball forward and test the machine 

• Remember that for every case you deal with, your approach should have two purposes: 1) to move you closer to your goal, and 2) to train and test your machine (i.e., your people and your design). 

  • Everything is an experiment and a case study 

  • When a problem occurs, conduct the discussion at two levels: 1) the machine level (why that outcome was produced) and 2) the case-at-hand level (what to do about it). 

  • When making plans or rules, explain the principles behind them. 

  • Your policies should be natural extensions of your principles. 

  • While good principles and policies almost always provide good guidance, remember that there are exceptions to every rule. 

 6. Analyze the machine and course correct rapidly 

Probe deeply to learn what you can expect from your machine.

1. Create documentation to ensure that everyone has the same basic threshold level of understanding

2. Use daily, weekly and monthly updates as a tool for staying on top of what your people are doing and thinking.

3. Probe so you know whether problems are likely to occur before they actually do.

4. Probe to the level below the people who report to you.

5. Have the people who report to the people who report to you feel free to escalate their problems to you.

6. Don’t assume that people’s answers are correct. (Trust but verify)

7. Make your probing transparent rather than private.

8. Welcome probing into your machine building. It may uncover hidden truths

9. Remember that people who see things and think one way often have difficulty communicating with and relating to people who see things and think another way.

10. Pull on all suspicious threads.

 7. Mitigate risks by having backups in every role 

Mitigate risks by having backups in every role.  This can be done via the Areas of Responsibility document 

 8. Perceive and don't tolerate problems 

• A well designed machine will automatically identify when something has gone wrong. Always strive to build automated quality control checks 

• For those systems that do not have automated quality control checks, if you’re not worried, you need to worry—and if you’re worried, you don’t need to worry. 

• Identification, creation and maintenance are different. Each requires unique skills. 

  • Don’t expect people to be great at all. Help people get in and stay in their Genius Zone 

  • Assign people the job of creating resolution to the problems and give them time to investigate 

    • Realize that the people closest to certain jobs probably know them best.  They must be include in the process 

• Watch out for the “Frog in the Boiling Water Syndrome.” 

  • New people to the organization are often the ones who can see broken processes and systems the best. Leverage this before they become blind to what they once saw 

• Beware of group-think: The fact that no one seems concerned doesn’t mean nothing is wrong. 

• To perceive problems, compare how the outcomes are lining up with your goals. 

• “Eat your own dog food” - make sure you use your own work

• Have as many eyes looking for problems as possible. 

• Be very specific about problems; don’t start with generalizations. 

  • Avoid the anonymous “we” and “they,” because they mask personal responsibility. 

• Don’t be afraid to fix the difficult things 

  • There is a huge emotional cost to letting things go unhandled 

  • Even if the problem isn’t solved, having a clear plan in place to solve the problem will alleviate tremendous anxiety and improve people’s emotional state 

 9. System proliferation is expensive

System proliferation is very expensive. If adding a new system, there better be a very good reason to do it.  If anywhere close to ambivalent, stick with the existing system 

Task Principles 

Principles for when a task should be created vs. a subtask or description.

1. A task should be added if it involves a single person performing a step in a process that is separate from other actions taken to complete the work. (e.g. Bill payment is a separate task from bill approval because it is performed by a different person on a different day).

   1. If a task has two people assigned to it, it should be two separate tasks.

2. A sub-task is an action that might be forgotten or requires additional thought but is not performed distinctly from its parent task (e.g. JAS notifies AL that bill entry is complete is a sub-task because it is an action to be performed but is not separated from the parent task of Bill Preparation).

   1. Sub-tasks generally will not have assignees or due dates, but instead is assumed that the assignee and due date of its parent task will apply.

3. A description should be added for items that do not fit either of the above two criteria (e.g. bill entry must be completed by the 1st of the month).

12. Optimize for Goals, Not Tasks or Functions

Overview

It’s easy to focus on the urgent at the expense of the important. By focusing on outcomes not tasks, we lessen the likelihood of doing this

Ways to Live the Principle:

1. Build your organization from the output backwards through the process to the inputs

   • Remember that everyone must be overseen by a believable person who has high standards. 

   • Make sure the people at the top of each pyramid have the skills and focus to manage their direct reports and a deep understanding of their jobs. 

   • In designing your organization, remember that the 6 Step Process is the path to success and that different people are good at different steps. 

   • Don’t build the organization to fit the people. 

   • Consider succession and training in your design. 

 2. Be Mutually Exclusive, Completely Exhaustive

• When cascading down from a goal to tasks, be MECE - Mutually Exclusive and Completely Exhaustive

  • Putting in the effort to make you work MECE means you are showing Empathy towards your colleagues and clients. Why?  Because

    • MECE is clean and intuitive

    • There is no risk of missing something

    • It ensures no duplication of work

 3. Have clear owners for each area of responsibility

• Have the clearest possible reporting lines and delineations of responsibilities. 

• Team members should have clearly defined roles & responsibilities in operating and building the machine

  • Sometimes, it’s appropriate for people to step out of their core area of responsibility. In these situations, setting a clear target date for when you will finish up this work and return full time to your area of responsibility will ensure that the overall machine suffers limited disruption

  • Have clear Areas of Responsibility, with the reasons why it matters, a clear owner, backup support and metrics

 4. Optimize for global not local outcomes

Optimize for the global outcome vs the local outcome.

• This is related to thinking through 2nd and 3rd order consequences in that system & application proliferation creates an overall strain on the business that often outweighs the increased effectiveness of the perfect application for a localized problem

 5. If you're focused on a solution, step back to find the associated Goal

• If you find yourself focused on a solution that you find important, analyze why to find the true goal you are trying to achieve

• Once you’ve found this goal, disregard the solution and follow the 6 Step Process to achieving the goal. 

  • If you don’t do this, you are being disingenuous.  This is Principle Theatre and is transparent.  

  • If you see somebody engaging in Principle Theater, it is your responsibility to call them out 

 6. Have clear goals

• Communicate the plan clearly and have clear metrics conveying whether you are progressing according to it. 

  • Use the 6 Step Process

 7. Use a framework for almost every decision you make

1,000s of people have had the same goal you currently have. Some of them had done the research on the effectiveness of different approaches to that goal and have documented a framework for how they believe is best to achieve it

• Use a framework for almost every decision you make 

  • Frameworks are like principles, only more specific to a certain type of goal / problem

  • If you are not using a framework, first list out the frameworks you evaluated and document why none of them work. You’ll usually find that there is a good framework 

  • Get agreement from all relevant parties on the framework to be used before going into the details. This helps avoid circular reasoning 

Principles in Action

Interesting Articles

A Tactical Guide to Managing Up: 30 Tips from the Smartest People We Know

• https://firstround.com/review/a-tactical-guide-to-managing-up-30-tips-from-the-smartest-people-we-know/  

The Real Reason People Won’t Change {Harvard Business Review Article}

• It’s a psychological dynamic called a “competing commitment,” and until managers understand how it works and the ways to overcome it, they can’t do a thing about change-resistant employees. by

  • Robert Kegan

  • Lisa Lahey

Case Studies

S​tride Principles Case Study

• Summary

  • The goal of this case study is to document and reveal how Stride should refer to and utilize the Core Principles when making strategic decisions, namely when considering a compensation change  

  • When reviewing the best way to approach a compensation change, Stride's leadership considered different goals and how each best fit the needs of the situation and the organization as a whole. The considerations were:

    • Retention - Approach a compensation change with the primary goal of securing/increasing retention rates​

    • F​airness - To create a fair and equitable compensation structure for the company and all Stride employees. Fairness would be determined using factual information, i.e. market comparisons, current Stride compensation levels, budgetary constraints/requirements, skills assessments, and level of responsibility (i.e. specialist, lead, or manager position)

    • I​ndividual performance assessment - align a compensation change with an individual's contributions, not in support of an overall company structure or strategy

It was agreed upon that the goal for compensation changes should be fairness, i.e. creating a comp structure that is fair, equitable, and appropriate for Stride as a business and all affected employees

ADDITIONAL FACTS

The team did a thorough situational analysis and grounded each desired outcome with Stride principles:

Optimize for Goals, not Functions

• Determine potential for comp adjustment based upon employee title and responsibilities (Make and honor commitments)

• Collect data about salary comparisons of like-positions within and across the marketplace (Fact based decision)

• Evaluate compensation of others in organization - below, above, lateral (Invest in ourselves and each other)

• Evaluate current department capacity and resource allocations to reveal any training or additional hiring needs (Hire right and continuously train)

• Determined desire for the specific employee to remain a Stride resource long-term (Wisdom of the Group)

• Seek to balance the employee's hours per work week to create a family/work life balance (Have and practice empathy)

• Recognize a shared desire to compensate employees fairly (Have and practice empathy)

RECOMMENDATIONS

• Build and present at least 2 to 3 compensation structure options that prioritize the targeted Stride principles

• Present the options to the employee and have a WoG of which option is the best fit for Stride and the employee

• Take feedback from the employee to determine any negotiable points

• Come to a shared agreement on the established comp structure and the performance expectations associated with the compensation, title, and/or suggested change

• Notify all affected parties of the change and the effective date

Principles Related Decks

• Stride Principles Deck

• Only One Person Should Lose Sleep Over a Problem

• Diagnose and Solve Problems at the Root Cause Level