Managing with principles

As a manager, one of my favorite tools to use with my team is principles. Principles encourage independent—but informed—decision making. They codify which behaviors tend to lead to good outcomes by making them clear and memorable.

What are principles?

Of course, there are many ways to interpret the word “principles”. So, here’s what I mean. Good principles:

• Are short, memorable statements
• Suggest action
• Apply in many situations
• Help you make decisions

Examples

To illustrate, here are a few of my favorite principles:

“No one gets surprised”

Surprises within a business are usually bad. For example, sometimes designs are unavoidably late. But if someone is waiting for those designs, they don’t want to find out at the last second they’ll be late. The earlier people know, the faster they can plan around such a delay.

This principle encourages early communication to prevent surprises. It applies to everyone we work with, regardless of level. It even applies to how we think about customers, who also generally don’t like getting surprised either (think fees, bad experiences, expectations around interactions, etc). I even think about this principle in my personal life!

“Go small vs unknowns”

When there are lots of unknowns—like in startups or new products—it’s better to do small amounts of work and get feedback often. As designers, we are often tempted to perfect a design before showing anyone. This can waste time investing too much in a wrong path. Instead, it’s better to do a little work and check in. Get feedback from coworkers or customers. Only when most repeated of the unknowns have been worked out—for example, a repeated process has been solidified—is it better to do large batches of work.

“Different viewpoints solve problems”

This principle is about shifting our own viewpoint, or seeking viewpoints of others. When stumped on a design problem, we may need to look at it differently. For example, looking at your design on your phone instead of your screen may reveal issues or opportunities you hadn’t seen before. And usually getting input from another team member, customers, or stakeholders will reveal things as well. One of the most common applications of this principle is using qualitative and quantitative data to inform our decisions. That data provides different viewpoints of the situation which are critical for solving a problem.

Why principles?

Principles help with independent decision making. Work is filled ambiguous situations—”Should I do X or Y?”. This is where principles can help. They give guidelines to decide which action to take, and provide rationale for the decision. The team member can confidently make a decision— “Well, this seems like a situation where ‘No one gets surprised’ applies, so I’m going to do Y”.

Principles have exceptions

Even really solid principles have exceptions. They’re not ultimate truths. For example, a big exception to “No one gets surprised” is nice surprises. Customers like nice surprises, like moments of delight or free stuff. It’s also great as a manager to surprise your team with something nice, like an afternoon off or some small treat. But even though they have exceptions, good principles will give us guidance in a lot of situations.

Actionability

A good principle suggests actions or helps decide between possible actions. For example, one designer, Jesse, noticed patterns on his team that were leading to some messy situations. He had an idea for a new principle, “Anticipate messes”. He worked with it for a bit, but it turned out to be missing something. It suggested just constantly scanning for messes—but not what to do about it. Jesse started paying attention to what helped, and found that over-communicating often defused potential issues. So Jesse suggested a new version of the principle: “When anticipating messes, default to more communication”. This new version told Jesse what to do about the messes.

How to use principles with team members

To introduce people on my team to working with principles, I assign new team members two starter principles. I’ve found “No one gets surprised” and “Go small vs unknowns” are great to start with. Then, in each 1-1 we talk about situations where they applied and didn’t apply.

Over time, I give them more principles—and encourage them to make the principles their own. For example, one team member changed “Go small vs unknowns” to “Share early and often”. She felt this applied more directly to her process as a designer, whereas “Go small” applies more broadly to lots of functions within a company.

Developing new principles

I’m constantly experimenting with new principles, and I encourage team members to make their own as well. Principles can start out small, helping with a very specific situation. But some evolve over time and become broader, more universal.

To make a new principle, watch for patterns that lead to good or bad experiences. Then try to find a simple phrase that encapsulates the pattern and suggests the right action. Then watch for situations where the principle might apply. You can track whether the actions suggested by the principle led to better outcomes. If so, it’s a data point in support of the new principle. If not, try tweaking the phrasing of the principle or connecting new actions to it. Then you can continue to refine over time.

Try principles today

Principles can help you and your team members perform better. Start with one or two of my favorites above and see how they work for you. Then find new ones that work for your specific situation. I hope they help you as much as they’ve helped me and my team members!