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Evolve

Growth

The 4 core principles of a principled business

smiling red-headed woman at a white board

1. Strategic narrative

window with neon sign saying 'what is your story?'
Photo by Etienne Girardet on Unsplash

You should have a clear story and a clear vision for your business—understand where you came from, where you are now and where you are going; you should also have a really good story and understand why you exist as a company, what your purpose is. So many SME’s have got great stories—starting in garages and bedrooms, etc—but they forget to tell their story, even more so as they get busier.

New staff come in and they don’t know the story and it gets lost. Early staff will know the story but as the business grows and you take on more staff, that dissipates and if you’re not careful, you can lose that narrative. A strong story is key for the staff as well as customers—customers want to know who you are as well—they can buy your service anywhere so they really want to know why your business exists and what it stands for. Put your story on your website and make it part of your recruitment and induction process.

2. Engaging managers

Whether you like it or not, most business owners fall into managerial roles in some way or another. The problem is that management is not necessarily part of an entrepreneur’s skill set—they generally don’t enjoy it and they’ve never been taught how to lead and manage, so typically they base all their leadership and management skills on their previous experiences of being managed and led, and that’s either going to be good or bad.

A good business and founder understands that management is part of their job; a bad business and founder says they’ll manage staff when they’ve got time. The result will be varying degrees of good and bad managers across the business, because no skill sets have been given to them. Care for and nurture your staff!

3. Integrity

shallow depth focus of a thick chain
Photo by Mike Alonzo on Unsplash

Integrity means walking the talk. Integrity is about having a set of values and beliefs that aren’t just stuck on a wall, and that you can’t remember, and when you ask the MD they can’t tell you. It’s about bringing those values and beliefs to life and making sure that if the customer is king, you treat them like a king and you measure that. Instil a system of consequences and rewards for following through on those principles.

If you’ve got principles around being honest, for instance, measure it, put it into your appraisal process. Whatever those values are, make sure everyone knows them and lives and breathes them. This starts with you as the founder and leader of the business, because if the team see owners and managers not following those principles, then they’ll question why they should. As soon as one member of the management team, board, etc, stop following your guiding principles, it all collapses like a house of cards.

4. Employee voice

Richard Branson says he employs people so they can tell hm what to do, not the other way round—you should aim for the same philosophy in your business. Look to employ great people who do great work, then listen to them—they know what the challenges are in their roles, they know what the challenges are with a client.

People like to be listened to, heard and made to feel they’re bringing value to the organisation; you could be missing genuine pearls of wisdom from those individuals who are at the coalface, because they know the situation better than you do.

man and woman smiling and laughing in meeting room
Photo by Jason Goodman on Unsplash

Remember that leadership teams are normally fast-paced and lean towards a gung-ho approach, whereas staff generally prefer things to be settled and for things to be left as they are—they don’t like a lot of change. Consequently, when you’ve got some new idea you want to pursue, it’s important for to bring in some of those naysayers in your organisation who question why you’re doing stuff; bring them into the transformation teams because they’ll see the rocks ahead. This’ll ensure that when you come up with your plan of action, it’s well thought through rather than the result of a bunch of leaders bent on conquering the world without realising there’s not enough money to do it! Have a good change management process and understand the change management curve. When you can get everybody to buy into the change and understand it, they’ll be on the journey with you.

  • Listen to our discussion with Steve Jones around these four principles here.

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