Principles are
fundamental truths that serve as the foundations for behavior that gets you
what you want out of life.
Having a good set of
principles is like having a good collection of recipes for success.
My painful mistakes
shifted me from having a perspective of "I know I'm right" to having
one of "How do I know I'm right?"
Time is like a river
that carries us forward into encounters with reality that require us to make
decisions. We can't stop our movement
down this river and we can't avoid these encounters. We can only approach them in the best way
possible.
The most painful
lesson that was repeatedly hammered home is that you can never be sure of
anything. There are always risks out
there that can hurt you badly, even in
the seemingly safest bets, as it's always best to assume you're missing
something.
If you work hard and
creatively, you can have just about anything you want, but not everything you
want. Maturity is the ability to reject
good alternatives in order to pursue even better ones.
Wise people stick
with sound fundamentals through the ups and downs, while flighty people react
emotionally to how things feel, jumping into things while they're hot and
abandoning them when they're not.
When faced with the
choice between two things that you need that are seemingly at odds, go slowly
to figure out how you can have as much of both as possible.
While one gets
better at things over time, it doesn't become any easier if one is also
progressing to higher levels -- the Olympic athlete finds his sport to be every
bit as challenging as the novice does.
Idealists who are
not well grounded in reality create problems, not progress.
Truth -- or, more
precisely, an accurate understanding of reality -- is the essential foundation
for any good outcome.
If you're not
failing, you're not pushing your limits, and if you're not pushing your limits,
you're not maximizing your potential.
Every time you
confront something painful, you are at a potentially important juncture in your
life -- you have the opportunity to choose healthy and painful truth or
unhealthy but comfortable delusion.
It's up to you to
connect what you want with what you need to do to get it and then find the
courage to carry it through.
Don’t confuse what
you wish were true with what is really true.
If you want to reach
your goals, you must be calm and analytical so that you can accurately diagnose
your problems, design a plan that will get you around them, and do what's
necessary to push through to results.
View painful
problems as potential improvements that are screaming at you.
Acknowledging your
weaknesses is not the same as surrendering to them. It's the first step toward overcoming them.
Once you identify a
problem, don't tolerate it.
Remember that there
are typically many paths to achieving your goals. You only need to find one that works.
Weaknesses don't
matter if you find solutions.
Everyone has at
least one big thing that stands in the way of their success.
The two biggest
barriers to good decision making are your ego and your blind spots. Together, they make it difficult for you to
objectively see what is true about your and your circumstances.
To be effective you
must not let your need to be right be more important than your need to find out
what's true.
To be radically
open-minded, you need to be so open to the possibility that you could be wrong
that you encourage others to tell you so.
Recognize that 1)
the biggest threat to good decision making is harmful emotions, and 2) decision
making is a two-step process (first learning and then deciding).
Don't mistake
possibilities for probabilities.
In order to have the
best life possible, you have to: 1) know what the best decisions are and 2)
have the courage to make them.
Tough love is
effective for achieving both great work and great relationships.
Your organization is
a machine made up of culture and people that will interact to produce outcomes,
and those outcomes will provide feedback about how well your organization is
working.
Make your passion
and your work one and the same and do it with people you want to be with.
Being radically
truthful and radically transparent are probably the most difficult principles
to internalize, because they are so different from what most people are used
to.
Great cultures, like
great people, recognize that making mistakes is part of the process of
learning.
While their
"upper-level yous" understand the benefits of it, their
"lower-level yous" tend to react with a flight-or-fight response.
It is a fundamental
law of nature that you get stronger only by doing difficult things.
While concealing the
truth might make people happier in the short run, it won't make them smarter or
more trusting in the long run.
Realize that you
have nothing to fear from knowing the truth.
Never say anything
about someone that you wouldn't say to them directly.
Radical transparency
isn't the same as total transparency. It
just means much more transparency than is typical.
Share the things
that are hardest to share.
Meaningful
relationships and meaningful work are mutually reinforcing, especially when
supported by radical truth and radical transparency.
The most meaningful
relationships are achieved when you and others can speak openly to each other
about everything that's important, learn together, and understand the need to
hold each other accountable to be as excellent as you can be.
Everyone makes
mistakes. The main difference is that
successful people learn from them and unsuccessful people don't.
When you know what
someone is like, you know what you can expect from them.
Radical truth
doesn't require you to be negative all the time.
Remember that a root
cause is not an action but a reason.
Think about both the
big picture and the granular details, and understand the connections between
them. Avoid fixating on irrelevant
details. You have to determine what's
important and what's unimportant at each level.
