Our 9 Guiding Principles help individuals and organizations foster conscious and meaningful relationships, both in business and in life. These principles are designed to promote awareness, inclusivity, collaboration, value creation, sustainability, innovation, commitment, and continuous learning.
To help you better understand and utilize the principles, think of them in the context of 3 subsets:
- Foundational Awareness
- Collaborative Engagement
- Innovative Growth
Each of the subsets includes three of our 9 Guiding Principles.
Foundational Awareness
This subset focuses on building a foundation of consciousness and understanding. Cultivating awareness helps individuals and organizations become more conscious of their actions and their impact on others. Embracing diversity acknowledges the value of different perspectives, backgrounds, and experiences. Inspiring respect promotes a culture of empathy, inclusivity, and treating others with dignity.
Cultivate Awareness: Cultivating Awareness is a foundational principle for growing the good for ourselves and others, be it transforming scarcity into abundance, conflict into harmony, invisibility into recognition, despair into hope. Whether we need to enliven a team, conquer a business-as-usual culture, re-imagine ourselves, put our values into action against the values of an organization (and thrive!), shift the trajectory of our journey toward a new career, or start our own business – the first step is waking up to the reality of our situation, the importance of our dreams, and the power of our choices. This principle encourages individuals and organizations to develop a deeper understanding of themselves, their actions, and their impact on others. By being more aware, we can make more conscious decisions and take responsibility for our choices.
Embrace Diversity: Embracing Diversity comes through recognizing the inherent diversity of life on Planet Earth. Life wants to happen in blatant defiance of Darwinist theories that claim life is all about Survival of the Fittest. In reality, life on Earth has thrived not through fierce competition but through Specialization and Cooperation. On the Galapagos Islands, in times of abundance, the birds have been observed to eat anything they can. Yet in times of scarcity they specialize. Birds with the biggest and strongest beaks break open hard-shelled nuts, leaving the smaller kernels for others. This principle is also about working with an economy of effort – preserving our biggest efforts for where they are most needed while eliminating waste and saving time. This principle recognizes and appreciates the value of different perspectives, backgrounds, and experiences. It encourages us to create inclusive environments where everyone feels respected and included.
Inspire Respect: Inspiring Respect empowers the benefits of diversity through appreciation and understanding. It casts out the toxins of assumption, distrust, indifference, othering, and type-casting so that we can see each other through the lenses of trust, respect, and common ground. Inspiring Respect in ourselves and others is shifting the gravity of what we perceive as between us toward what could be amongst us. This is where we can start to lean-in, bending toward one another in the context of our individual and collective potential. This principle promotes a culture of empathy, kindness, and treating others with dignity. It emphasizes the importance of respecting and valuing every individual’s unique contributions and worth.
Collaborative Engagement
This subset emphasizes the importance of collaboration and collective success. Encouraging cooperation promotes teamwork and fosters a sense of shared purpose and responsibility. Generating value highlights the commitment to creating meaningful outcomes and benefits for all stakeholders. Seeking sustainability reflects the recognition of the need to balance economic, environmental, and social considerations for long-term success.
Encourage Cooperation: This principle emphasizes the power of teamwork and collaboration. It encourages individuals and organizations to work together towards common goals, fostering a sense of shared purpose and collective success. Encouraging Cooperation is moving from being together toward acting together for the common good. This principle is where we put our diversity and respect for one another into action for a common goal. Life in a multitude of forms has thrived not through competition, as competition is far too demanding on resources, but rather through cooperation and specialization. If we observe powerful teams, they are powerful because they were formed with cooperation and specialization in mind. Team members are honored for their diversity and assigned roles that put their strengths into action.
Generate Value: This principle is demonstrated by the Three Sisters Model of companion planting used by Indigenous Peoples from many lands. They planted corn, beans, and squash together such that each plant would give the other what it needed to thrive. The Corn Sister, a heavy nitrogen feeder, provided scaffolding for the Bean Sister. The Bean Sister in turn had the ability to replenish the Corn Sister’s soil with nitrogen. The Squash Sister draped her prickly leaves over the soil, providing shelter for all from the sun and pests. Yet the Three Sisters Model is not just for planting gardens. It is a model for every aspect of our personal and professional lives. This principle highlights the commitment to creating meaningful outcomes and benefits for all stakeholders. It encourages us to focus on delivering value, whether it’s through products, services, or interactions with others.
Seek Sustainability: This principle acknowledges the need to balance economic, environmental, and social considerations for long-term success. It promotes responsible practices that support a sustainable future for individuals, organizations, and the planet. Seeking Sustainability means that we are not focused so much on short-term gains as we are on the long game. Out of desire and urgency, we feel compelled to make something happen now. In turn, we exert an effort powerful enough to create an explosion of short-term results, but such a “flash in the pan” is likely to exact high costs to the players involved and unwittingly extend those costs to others, with unanticipated consequences. Such a train of circumstances is most often a prelude to depletion and exhaustion, leading to conflict and lost opportunity. Whereas Seeking Sustainability is the principle that keeps us present and mindful of the impact of our actions on ourselves, others, and the future.
Innovative Growth
This subset focuses on driving continuous improvement and growth. Sparking imagination encourages creativity, exploration, and the generation of new ideas. Exercising commitment emphasizes the importance of dedication, perseverance, and follow-through to achieve goals. Prioritizing learning emphasizes the value of ongoing education, personal and professional development, and adaptability to navigate evolving challenges and opportunities.
Spark Imagination: Sparking Imagination is the Guiding Principle that asks us to transcend the current state for the sake of creating something new. Though the current state is important to understand and learn from, creating from it is akin to moving the same furniture around the same old room. Sparking Imagination gets us out of the room where we can envision new ways, untethered to past expectations and established ways of being and doing. Sparking our imaginations is about the What and not about the How. The How comes through the other principles, but the genesis of every “How” is a vision of something new.
Exercise Commitment: Exercising Commitment is deliberately engaging the energies of attachment to remain steadfast in the process of achieving a goal – the process as informed by the other eight Guiding Principles. When exercising commitment, we set ourselves up for engagements that cannot be easily dissolved. We step all the way in, becoming immersed in the journey, stretching ourselves, enduring whatever difficulties come our way. Though struggle is not sustainable, the journey through is not negotiable. Such attachment would be a fatal liability but in harmony with the rest of the Guiding Principles, it is the rigor that is needed to stay the course until we discover the treasure that awaits us, and carry it back in service of growing the good for ourselves and others. This principle emphasizes the importance of dedication, perseverance, and follow-through. It encourages individuals and organizations to stay committed to their goals and values, even in the face of challenges.
Prioritize Learning: This principle is founded on curiosity and is a safeguard against complacency, denial, arrogance, and mindless action. Learning exerts a persistent pressure that keeps us awake in our actions, opening doors with knowledge, experience, and understanding. There is never a solution so great that cannot be made greater through learning. Prioritizing Learning is the constructive action we can always take, in spite of our powerlessness over difficulties and events. Prioritizing Learning is the insistence that there is a better way regardless of the past or present circumstances. It is “staying on the field” regardless of the conditions and doing the work that creates breakthroughs. This principle recognizes the value of continuous learning and personal growth. It encourages individuals and organizations to embrace a mindset of curiosity, adaptability, and ongoing education to navigate change and seize opportunities.
The Impact of the 9 Guiding Principles
The first subset establishes a strong foundation of awareness and respect, the second subset highlights collaboration and value creation, and the third subset promotes innovative thinking and growth. By aligning with these principles, individuals and organizations can focus on creating positive impact, meaningful relationships, and sustainable success.
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