Building a Stronger Foundation: Upflow's Approach to Operating Principles

Have you ever faced questions like these as an organization? "Should we organize another brainstorming session, or decide based on what we know and reassess in a few weeks?", "Should I address issues I have with my peers immediately, or compile them into broader feedback later?", "Should I attend this meeting without an agenda, or first ask why we’re meeting today?", "Is this ok to lie a bit to close another deal, or communicate transparently about the value our product offers today?", "Should I wait for an over-performer to request a pay raise, or be proactive about it?"

These decisions, whether big or small, depend heavily on your company culture and the principles that guide your team.

At Upflow, we’ve been actively working to make these "rules of the game" as clear and explicit as possible. In this blog post, we’ll share why we felt that clarifying our operating principles was key, how we approached this effort, and the lessons we’ve learned along the way. We don’t claim to have all the answers, nor do we intend to lecture. Our goal is simply to share our experience as a reference point for other companies that might face similar situations and looking to improve cross-collaboration and decision-making.

Let's dive in!

1. The Initial Trigger: Why We Started This Journey

From the early days of Upflow, our values were explicit and played a significant role in our success. They helped us hire for cultural fit and foster a cohesive team. However, by early 2022, after growing from 13 to 60 people in less than a year, it became clear that our existing values no longer resonated as strongly as they once did. New team members often struggled to understand their meaning or how we were expected to use them. This rapid growth signaled the need for a refresh. To tackle this, we brought together a diverse group of team members, including those who had been with the company since its early days and grew alongside it, as well as newer hires with valuable experience in the field. Together, we began the process of defining our shared Operating Principles.

Before diving into how we documented these principles, we want to address a common question we often hear from peer companies: Why did we choose "Operating Principles" instead of sticking with "Values"?

At Upflow, as in many companies, we initially focused on "values" to guide our culture and decision-making. Values are the core beliefs that define who we are as a company. They reflect our identity and what we stand for, serving as the foundation of our culture. Examples might include "builder," "caring," or "honesty." These values are aspirational and broad, often serving as a moral compass.

However, as the company grew and our operations became more complex, we realized that while values were essential, they didn’t provide the specific guidance needed for consistent, everyday decision-making and behavior. This is where our Operating Principles (OP) come into play.

Operating Principles at Upflow go beyond being an extension of our values—they are the core tenets that define how we work and interact as a team. These principles outline the specific behaviors and skills we prioritize. They drive our actions and guide decision-making at every level. For instance, while one of our values might be "innovation," an operating principle would be "Experiment boldly, but with data-backed decisions."

Operating Principles serve as the pillars of our culture, ensuring that everyone at Upflow is aligned on how to work together effectively. Unlike values, which are broad and aspirational, Operating Principles are actionable and practical. They assist our team in several critical ways:

• 🚦 Hire for Cultural Fit: They provide a clear framework for hiring, ensuring we bring on people who naturally align with how we operate, regardless of their background and origin.

• 🎓 Onboard & Review Performance: They guide onboarding and performance reviews, helping team members understand the behaviors that are valued and necessary for personal growth and success at Upflow. As Netflix puts it, “The real values of a firm are shown by who gets rewarded or let go.”

• 👆 Make Decisions: They empower everyone to make important decisions that are consistent with how the entire group operates. These principles are clear and explicit, so that anyone following them is likely to make decisions in line with what company leaders would make.

In essence, values define who we are and what we believe in, while Operating Principles define how we act and make decisions daily, ensuring our actions align with our values.

By design, Operating Principles are expected to be polarizing. Some people will find they align well with these principles, while others may not. For those who don’t, Upflow may not be the right fit—and that’s okay. It’s actually beneficial for both Upflow and the individual to identify this early on, thanks to the clear and explicit "rules of the game."

This distinction became crucial for us at Upflow as we scaled. We needed more than just a shared understanding of what we believe in — we needed clear, actionable guidelines to help our team make consistent decisions that reflect those beliefs in every aspect of our operations.

2. The Process in Action: How We Defined Our Operating Principles

In this section, we’ll walk you through how we developed our Operating Principles at Upflow. We’ll begin with how we kicked off the project, including who was involved and what we set out to achieve. Then, we’ll dive into the workshops, where we’ll explore how they were structured, who participated, and how we generated and refined ideas. We’ll also touch on our iterative approach, showing how feedback from the team played a crucial role in shaping the principles: we’ll explain how we onboarded the entire team to keep everyone engaged and aligned, and how we made sure to capture diverse perspectives to ensure that the final principles truly reflected our collective input.

Step 1 — CEO-Led Kickoff to Align and Engage the Team

To foster strong team engagement and underscore the significance of this initiative, we began by having our CEO take the lead and officially kick it off. This approach made it clear that this was not just a side project or a people-focused effort, but a strategic, company-wide priority.

Alex recorded a six-minute video acknowledging that Upflow is a unique place to work, noting that while some team members refer to our way of operating as “The Upflow Way,” there wasn’t a shared understanding of what that truly meant. He highlighted the importance of being clear about who we are and what we expect from each other. Drawing from conversations with founders who are years ahead of us, Alex shared a key insight: one of their biggest regrets was not defining how they wanted their teams to operate early on.

Recognizing that our current set of values, defined in Upflow’s early days, no longer resonated as strongly, Alex introduced a collective approach to document our operating principles. This would involve a series of workshops where everyone in the organization would contribute to defining what “The Upflow Way” really means. He emphasized that the goal wasn’t to fundamentally change how we operate, but rather to observe, discover, and articulate the principles that already guide our daily work. Alex encouraged everyone to fully participate, sharing their opinions, feedback, and concerns throughout the process. We also emphasized that while every input would be thoughtfully considered, the intention wasn’t to simply blend all perspectives into an average.

This step was crucial in capturing the team's attention and underscoring the project's importance.

Step 2 — Surveying the Team

Our objective was to create meaningful improvement, which required first gathering data on how well team members currently connect with and apply Upflow’s current values and Operating Principles in their daily work. To collect this insight, we launched an anonymous survey through Lattice, our HR platform. The key question we asked was:

“I understand, connect to, and know how to leverage Upflow’s values/operating principles in my day-to-day work.”

Strongly agree / Agree / Neutral / Disagree / Strongly disagree

The responses provided us with a quantitative baseline, offering insight into the relevance of our current values and a metric to compare against once the project is completed.

We also used this opportunity to share with the team a detailed timeline of events for the project over the coming weeks.

Step 3 — Discovering our Operating Principles with the “Founding” Team

Next, we held our first 2-hour workshop.

The participants included key company leaders and managers, along with a few of our “founding” individual contributors—those who have been with Upflow since the early days and have significantly shaped our company culture.

The goal of this initial workshop was to identify the behaviors we value most as a team. The expected outcome was to compile a list of 3-5 key behaviors, supported by a few real-life examples.

We began with a 30-minute introduction to ensure everyone understood what Operating Principles are: core tenets that describe how we work best, the specific behaviors and skills we prioritize, and the non-negotiable standards we uphold. We shared examples from other companies with clearly defined operating principles, like Stripe (which operates in our industry), with principles such as “Move with urgency and focus” and “Be meticulous in your craft.” We highlighted how these companies leverage their principles in hiring, performance management, and decision-making. Finally, we reinforced that this project is not only about imposing top-down directives, but rather creating principles that also emerge from and serve the team.

Next, we took 3-5 minutes of silent reflection, where participants were invited to consider a few prompts individually: “What behaviors should Upflow most encourage, value, reward, and care about as it scales?”, “What do successful Upflow team members have in common?”, and “What behaviors have helped us succeed so far?”

Afterward, we split into groups of three for a 30-minute brainstorming session. Each group was tasked with identifying and describing three key behaviors they believed Upflow should prioritize, along with providing at least one narrative example for each behavior. We provided an organized Notion note for the groups to document their progress.

Half an hour later, we reconvened. As the project manager, I read the results aloud and cleaned the list for potential duplicates in real-time, ensuring everyone could see the process. This step set the stage for a 20-minute Q&A session, where participants could discuss and clarify the behaviors they submitted.

Finally, participants were invited to vote on the behaviors they believed Upflow should prioritize as it scales. Each person could cast up to three votes and use one “red card” to oppose the adoption of a particular behavior. This process resulted in a ranked list of behaviors, supported by real-life examples, that the company should champion as it grows.

At this stage, nothing was formally decided yet. This workshop was a collective consultation, but the final decision rested with the founders. They would ultimately decide on the company’s Operating Principles, now equipped with valuable input directly sourced from the team.

In the days following the workshop, I reviewed the proposals and worked on translating them into clear Operating Principles. For each one, I crafted a headline, a five-line description, and a list of dos and don’ts. Here’s an example:

🧢 We radically own our duties

Because we are given the trust and a safe space to do it ourselves with no micromanagement, we take ultimate ownership of what we are responsible for delivering. When pitching an idea or driving a project, we always come up with a recommendation. We don’t let things fall into the cracks, we follow up. Ultimately, we take ownership of our failures, regardless of where we stand in the team.

🟢 DOs

• Explain the goals and reasons of the projects you own

• Make a simple plan for others to relate to it

• Empower others around you and the project you own, fostering continuous communication

• Always come up with a recommendation

• Take ownership of your failures

• We trust and respect the chain of command

🔴 DON’Ts

• Miss deadlines without notifying other stakeholders

• Reject responsibility on someone else

• Let things fall into the cracks

• Complain about challenges or setbacks

• Lose yourself in tasks, prioritize poorly
  

Step 4 — Founder Validation: Aligning the Operating Principles with Leadership Vision

After synthesizing the insights from the workshops and crafting the initial recommendations, we reached a pivotal step: reviewing the proposed Operating Principles with the company founders.

This step was critical to ensure that the final principles not only reflected the team’s collective input but also aligned with the founders’ vision for Upflow’s culture and leadership expectations. For these principles to succeed, they needed to fully resonate with the leadership team, ensuring their buy-in and enabling them to lead by example.

Here’s how we approached this step:

1. Presenting Initial Recommendations

I met with the founders to share the results from the workshops and the draft Operating Principles. For each principle, I presented the supporting behaviors, real-life examples, and dos and don’ts we had compiled. The goal was to provide a comprehensive view of how the principles were crafted and how they could translate into actionable guidelines for the company.

2. Open Discussion and Refinement

This meeting wasn’t just about sharing—it was a collaborative dialogue. We discussed the rationale behind each principle, debated any areas of ambiguity, and considered how these principles would hold up in real-world scenarios. Some principles were validated as-is, while others were adjusted based on the founders’ feedback to ensure they resonated fully with their vision for Upflow’s culture and operating system.

3. Final Approval and Alignment

Once refined, the founders gave their formal approval, effectively “stamping” the Operating Principles as the cultural and operational foundation for the company. This step was more than procedural; it was a moment of alignment, ensuring the leadership team was ready to champion these principles in their actions and decisions moving forward.

4. Founders’ Role in Leading by Example

A key outcome of this process was the recognition that the founders must lead the adoption of these principles by example. They committed to embodying the principles in their daily interactions and decision-making, setting the tone for the rest of the team.

By dedicating time to this validation step, we ensured that the Operating Principles were not just a bottom-up initiative but a deeply aligned cultural blueprint that the entire company—from leadership to individual contributors—could embrace fully.

We then communicated these principles to the team, documenting everything in a Notion note and presenting them during an all-hands meeting. If you are interested, you can find the full list of our operating principles here.

Step 5 — Embedding the Principles into Day-to-Day Operations with the Team

With our Operating Principles validated by the company founders, the next challenge was ensuring they didn’t just become “mantras on a wall,” but core principles by which we actually operate every day.

To achieve this, we organized a series of workshops, each with 6 to 8 team members, facilitated by me as Chief of Staff. The goal was to brainstorm how we could effectively embed these principles into our daily operations.

We started by revisiting how other companies use their principles to guide decision-making, hiring, onboarding, and performance reviews. I then invited each group to brainstorm on what we could start, stop, or improve in our operations to live by our new principles. I encouraged the team to think about our operating system through the following lenses:

• Workflows: How we divide and complete work

• Meetings: How we coordinate and collaborate

• Information: How we share and use data, insights, and knowledge

• Relationships: How we build and maintain relationships

• Learn & Grow: How we develop and grow as individuals

Each workshop followed a structured three-phase process. First, the group would select one Operating Principle and one aspect of our operating system (e.g., "We radically own our duties" & "Meetings"). Next, they would reflect silently for 5 minutes on the prompt: “What should we start, reinforce, or stop in [the way we coordinate and collaborate] to [radically own our duties]?” We provided a structured Notion note for participants to log their ideas.

After this individual reflection, we split into smaller subgroups of 3-4 people for a 15-minute brainstorming session, continuing to populate the Notion document with suggestions. Finally, we reconvened with the 6-8 of us for 5 minutes to review, consolidate ideas, and clear any duplicates or questions. This process repeated for three rounds per group.

This exercise was incredibly powerful, inviting everyone to think critically about how our new principles should apply to our daily work. It also onboarded the entire team into this new way of working while identifying opportunities for organizational growth.

For a team of 60 people, this meant facilitating 8 to 10 workshops, each generating 10-15 actionable ideas for each combination of dimension and principle. That’s up to 400 proposals in total! At this stage, it’s crucial to take the time to clean, organize the ideas by theme, and prioritize actions—deciding what to address now, next, and later. From there, the selected actions can be turned into concrete projects, with clear responsibility assignments (RACI), timelines, and rhythms for progress.

Step 6 — Surveying the Team Again

Once we completed this phase of the project, it was time to measure its impact by sending the same survey question to the team that we had used before the project began:

“I understand, connect to, and know how to leverage Upflow’s values/operating principles in my day-to-day work.”

Strongly agree / Agree / Neutral / Disagree / Strongly disagree

This allowed us to assess whether team members felt a stronger connection to and understanding of Upflow’s Operating Principles in their daily work. The responses provided us with a clear quantitative indicator of the project’s success.

There may also be value in continuing to share this survey on a regular basis—perhaps annually—especially as the team grows. This would help ensure the principles continue to resonate and identify any opportunities for further education or refinement.

3. Challenges and Learnings: What We Learned Along the Way

What Went Well

- Intentionality and Strategic Focus

A key factor in the success of this initiative was the intentionality with which it was approached. From the beginning, defining and embedding our Operating Principles was positioned as a strategic, company-wide priority, rather than a side project. This clear framing ensured that everyone involved treated it with the seriousness and focus it deserved. Leadership’s visible commitment, from the CEO’s kickoff video to the founders’ direct involvement in validation, reinforced its importance. By aligning the team around a shared understanding of the initiative’s significance, we created momentum and ensured robust engagement at every stage.

- Transparency

One of the most significant successes of the process was the level of transparency we maintained throughout the entire project. From the outset, we ensured that everyone on the team understood the purpose behind the initiative, the current stage of progress, and what was coming next. This transparency helped keep the team aligned and engaged, as everyone had a clear picture of why the project mattered and how it was evolving. By regularly updating the team on the process, we eliminated any confusion or ambiguity, fostering a sense of ownership and involvement across the board.

- Preparation

Another key success was the extensive preparation that went into the workshops. Clear slide presentations and well-structured online collaboration tools were essential to keeping the sessions productive. When we facilitated the workshops, it was important that everything—from the presentation to the note-taking platform—was straightforward and easy to navigate. If the materials had been disorganized, it would have disrupted the flow of discussion, making it difficult for the group to reach meaningful conclusions. By investing time in making sure everything was user-friendly and intuitive, we set the stage for productive and efficient workshops.

- Relevance of the Outcome

A particularly rewarding outcome of this process was landing on Operating Principles that the entire team related to. This was possible by ensuring everyone’s voice was heard and by balancing input from the team with guidance from the founders. The bottom-up feedback from the workshops was essential, but keeping a direct line of communication with the founders helped reconcile any top-down perspectives. This ensured the final Operating Principles were not only reflective of the team’s collective input but also aligned with the broader leadership vision.

- Now Deeply Embedded

Perhaps the most gratifying aspect of the project is that our Operating Principles are now deeply embedded in our daily practices. The principles serve as a foundation for how we operate, and in moments of doubt or uncertainty, we find ourselves returning to them for clarity and guidance. This consistency has helped gather the team around a common way of working, reinforcing our cultural identity and giving us a reliable framework for decision-making.

Overcoming Hurdles

- Managing a Large Volume of Inputs

Another challenge we encountered was the sheer volume of proposals generated during the workshops. Depending on the size of your team, you may end up with a significant amount of output to analyze. Processing all this qualitative data takes time and effort, and as the project manager, you need to be prepared to manage large sets of insights efficiently. While we manually processed this information, in hindsight, leveraging AI tools to assist with data analysis could have saved us considerable time and allowed for quicker insights.

- Ensuring Long-Term Follow-Through

Finally, we learned that ensuring follow-through on action items was crucial to the long-term success of the project. It’s easy for the energy generated during workshops to fizzle out if there isn’t a clear plan for execution. To prevent this, we established a clear RACI (Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed) for each project that emerged from the workshops. Prioritization was equally important—by ranking the action items in terms of urgency and importance, we ensured that we continued to make progress on the most critical tasks. This structured approach to follow-through allowed us to maintain momentum and ensure the Operating Principles weren’t just theoretical but became actionable parts of our day-to-day operations.

4. Embedding the Principles: How We Use Them Daily

One of the most critical aspects of this project was ensuring that our Operating Principles became an integral part of our daily operations, decision-making processes, and overall company culture. These principles weren’t just meant to be theoretical—they were designed to shape how we work, hire, review performance, and make decisions across all levels of Upflow. Here’s how we’ve embedded them into our everyday practices:

Hiring for Cultural Fit

Our Operating Principles play a central role in how we evaluate and select candidates during the hiring process. Hiring managers—and ultimately the CEO, as the final decision-maker—are encouraged to assess candidates through the lens of our principles. For example:

• For the principle "We radically own our duties", hiring managers might ask: “What do you do when a project you are responsible for doesn’t go as planned? How do you communicate the failure?”

• For "We work in small batches, with the long term in mind", candidates might be asked: “What criteria do you use to decide when a project is ‘good enough’ to move forward versus needing more refinement?”

• For "We act with intelligence and master our craft", we might pose the question: “How do you stay curious and continuously improve in your role? What methods do you use to stay sharp?”

• When evaluating the principle "We invest in communication, with transparency and honesty", we ask: “Can you describe a time when you had to communicate something that wasn’t going well? How did you approach this conversation?”

• Finally, for "We have each other’s back", we test the candidate’s sense of teamwork with questions like: “How do you show support to colleagues, especially when their work doesn’t directly align with your own responsibilities?”

By integrating these specific questions into our hiring process, we ensure that we bring on team members who not only have the right skills but also naturally align with Upflow’s way of working.

Onboarding and Reviewing Performance

Our Operating Principles are deeply embedded in how we onboard new team members and review performance. From the very start, new hires are introduced to our principles, and we use them as a framework to guide their success at Upflow.

• During the 30/90-day reviews, we provide feedback and support to help new hires adopt these principles in their day-to-day work. This early feedback ensures that they understand the behaviors and values that are key to thriving in our culture.

• Our 360 reviews offer opportunities for more comprehensive feedback, where we evaluate both functional performance and alignment with our Operating Principles. This feedback loop helps us reinforce positive behaviors and identify areas for improvement.

• Additionally, through Lattice, our HR platform, team members can provide contextualized feedback to their peers, managers, or direct reports. When offering feedback, they need to tie their input to one of our Operating Principles, reinforcing their importance and helping to continuously embed them in our work culture.

By incorporating our Operating Principles into performance reviews and feedback, we ensure that they remain top-of-mind and that everyone understands how they contribute to personal and collective growth.

Making Decisions

Our Operating Principles are also instrumental in how we make decisions at Upflow. They provide a common ground for everyone to follow, ensuring that important decisions are made in line with the way the entire group operates. The clarity of these principles allows team members to make decisions confidently, knowing they align with company leaders’ expectations. Here are a few examples of how our principles guide decision-making:

• Radical Ownership: Team members are expected to take ownership by presenting recommendations alongside options when addressing an issue. This ensures that people take responsibility and provide solutions, rather than simply identifying problems.

• Working in Small Batches: We often make decisions with partial information, prioritizing speed and agility while understanding that some uncertainty is unavoidable. This approach allows us to maintain momentum and course-correct as needed.

• Transparent and Honest Communication: We’ve developed a strong written culture, where we document and track key decisions. Our decision ledger is a tool we use to document decisions, ensuring organizational clarity while providing a valuable resource for reviewing and learning from past choices. This transparency fosters trust and allows us to revisit and reflect on the reasoning behind key decisions.

By integrating our Operating Principles into decision-making processes, we ensure consistency, transparency, and accountability across the organization. These principles don’t just guide individual actions—they shape how we operate as a collective, driving us forward with clarity and focus.

5. Future Vision: What’s Next for Our Operating Principles

As Upflow continues to evolve, so too must our Operating Principles. The principles we've established have been instrumental in shaping how we work, but ensuring they remain relevant and impactful requires continuous attention. Looking ahead, several initiatives could help to further integrate and refine these principles, ensuring they continue to guide our growth and success.

Regular Training to Keep the Principles Alive

We want to make sure that our Operating Principles continue to live and breathe within the company. Every new team member participates in a dedicated session where we explain why these principles matter, clarify their meaning, and explore practical examples of both alignment and misalignment. Interestingly, we’ve found that examples of misfits are often the most effective in illustrating the principles in action. These sessions are personally led by our CEO, underscoring the significance of this initiative.

Beyond onboarding, we are committed to holding ongoing training sessions, also led by our CEO. These sessions will serve as a refresher on the principles, reinforce their importance in daily operations, and give team members the chance to engage with and reflect on how they apply them in their work.

By consistently revisiting and discussing the principles, particularly with the CEO himself, we ensure they remain embedded in our culture, rather than fading into the background.

Embedding the Principles in Our Hiring Process

While our Operating Principles are already an essential part of our hiring process, there may be an opportunity to formalize and strengthen this aspect. Currently, hiring managers are encouraged to assess candidates based on their fit with our principles, but we could take this a step further. We could design a structured step in the hiring process specifically focused on evaluating alignment with our Operating Principles. This could include a dedicated interview, with standardized questions and case studies that test for cultural fit.

By making this a formal part of the process, we could ensure that every candidate is thoroughly assessed for their compatibility with Upflow’s way of working.

Translating the Principles for the Management Team

As the company grows, it’s crucial that our managers understand how to apply these principles in their leadership roles. We’ve already done some pre-work within the CEO’s office to identify common challenges and tensions that arise in day-to-day operations.

One example is when ownership becomes unclear and team members feel their responsibilities are being contested. We could develop clear guidelines for managers on how to use the principles to resolve such tensions. For instance, under the principle of “We radically own our duties,” managers are encouraged to give clear mandates to their direct reports and ensure that these mandates are respected. Managers are also responsible for resolving any ownership disputes with other teams through the appropriate chain of command.

By equipping managers with these practical applications of our principles, we ensure that they can lead effectively and be an example for the rest of the team about how to operate at Upflow.

Establishing a Formal Committee to Uphold the Principles

To maintain the integrity of our Operating Principles as we scale, we could also introduce a formal committee dedicated to protecting these core elements of our culture. This committee could consist of 5-6 members who have demonstrated a strong alignment with the principles and a positive influence within the organization. Their mission would be to ensure that we all live by our Operating Principles, even as the company grows.

The committee’s responsibilities may include creating an “Operating Principles Personal Improvement Plan” to help individuals who are struggling to align with the principles, conducting interviews with candidates to assess their fit, and organizing training sessions on the principles.

The hope is that this committee will help ensure smoother cross-functional collaboration, reduce instances of hiring or onboarding failures, and ultimately increase our talent/OP density—meaning that we retain and develop employees who are deeply aligned with our culture, without necessarily increasing headcount. This would enhance our capital efficiency and improve the overall working experience for team members.

Refreshing the Principles as Needed

Finally, we recognize that our Operating Principles must evolve alongside the company. We are committed to refreshing the principles whenever the group feels they are no longer relevant or reflective of how we operate. This could happen as the team grows or when new challenges arise. By staying flexible and open to change, we ensure that our Operating Principles remain meaningful, every step of the way.

6. Conclusion: Reflecting on the Journey

As we look back on this journey of defining, embedding, and living by our Operating Principles, it's clear that having a solid cultural framework has been essential to Upflow’s growth and success. These principles are not just words on paper—they shape how we operate daily, guide our decision-making, and ensure that we remain aligned as a team, even as we scale. They help us stay true to who we are, while also providing the clarity needed to navigate the complexities of a growing organization.

Throughout this process, we’ve learned the value of transparency and collaboration. By engaging the entire team in the development of these principles, we ensured that they are not only top-down directives but also a true reflection of how we operate as a collective. Through this initiative, we’ve created a foundation that will continue to serve us as we take on new challenges and opportunities.

To other companies embarking on a similar journey, we hope our experience provides valuable insights and inspiration. Defining and living by your Operating Principles can be a transformative step in aligning your team, improving cross-functional collaboration, and providing a shared sense of purpose.

We’d love to hear how other companies approach this challenge. What Operating Principles guide your team? How do you ensure they’re lived out in daily practice? Feel free to reach out, and let’s continue this conversation.