Aligning on Guiding Principles

Strategic decisions often involve ambiguity, navigating uncharted territory, and learning new things about the business. Because of that, it’s easy to get caught up debating nitty-gritty details and complex business implications, slowing down the decision-making process. That’s why, before diving deeply into fact-finding, you should always get clarity and alignment from teams on why the decision matters.

Guiding principles are going to vary widely based on the type of strategic decision you’re trying to tackle.

However, here are a couple of considerations you should always have:

• What is the core business value that we want to drive? For instance, do we only care about growth or also profitability?
• What are other company priorities and how do they align with priorities here?
• How would we prioritize different stakeholders? Whose opinions really matter and who’s expected to just make things work?

A second reason guiding principles are so valuable is that they’re easy to communicate.

Guiding principles that capture business rationale well can help teams make decisions that are consistent with the broader business decision / thinking without having to seek guidance in every step of execution. In short, establishing guiding principles is a key management skill set.

Example: Customer Emails

All of that sounds super abstract, so here’s an example scenario:

Say your company has decided to launch customer communication via emails for the first time.

That’s super abstract! What’s the goal of these emails? Should they be sent out every day, every week, or only once in a while? What actions are we trying to get users to take after they receive the email?

A short list of clear guiding principles can help rally collaborators around the goal, and keep everyone on track toward meaningful outcomes.

The details will vary significantly based on the type of company. In an interview scenario, you'll likely have some intuition around what would work well, but don't skip ahead -- the key is distilling the business logic and intuition into clear, succinct statements.

Let’s imagine emails for an e-commerce company. The guiding principles might look something like this:

Principle #1: "Customer trust is our number one priority."

This priority can be interpreted in many different ways. For example, emails might build trust by providing timely and helpful information on customer orders. Trust can also mean respecting customer privacy and implementing rigorous monitoring systems around how customer data is used.

Principle #2: "Personalization is our secret sauce."

This priority shows how the company thinks of its competitive advantage and how it wants its customers to think of its brand. This could look like featuring personalized recommendations in emails, and building in ways for customers to save / favorite items. Of course, this can’t come at the expense of customer privacy, which is the first principle.

Principle #3: "The best customers are those we nurture."

This priority highlights the company’s perspective on what’s required to build a meaningful relationship with the customer. People don’t just show up and be good customers. It requires communication and education about products and services. This is an important mentality to highlight when creating customer emails!

Notice that none of these principles explicitly say what should be in customer emails, but the thinking here goes a long way in shaping all the decision-making required for the initiative.

Recap

Defining a set of guiding principles makes it easy to tie your solutions back to the right business priorities & communicate with stakeholders. Interviewers look for candidates who do this continuously, so make sure you get to the point where you feel comfortable doing this before moving on.

To show you can align on guiding principles:

• Consider the company's position from a high level. Showcase the work you did learning company values - but be careful not to make assumptions.
• Consider potential stakeholders & clearly define who's involved, in what capacity, and how you'll need to communicate to get things done.
• Be sure to define a few priorities - a primary, and one or two secondaries. This will help significantly with decisions down the road.
• When establishing guiding principles, make sure to put yourself in the shoes of the stakeholders involved. Does this principle empower them to make decisions without checking in? Is it simple to understand?