Background
Over the past decade working as a Managing Director in a global Strategy and Operations advisory firm, there were countless interesting insights and experiences. However the 4 below specifically stood out, as I saw them repeatedly and consistently across 50+ major corporations, in dozens of countries, various departments, at all levels of organizations, and throughout thousands of hours of additional research.
Insight 1: At a true root cause level, the hundreds of supposedly different issues that organizations face on a daily basis all actually boil down to a very select group of causes that repeat themselves over and over again, no matter the company, industry, country, etc.
Insight 2: In order to effect and manage sustainable change on that select group of root causes, it ultimately requires understanding, leading, and managing people; and in order to understand and influence people, there is an even smaller group of core root causes that define how and why people think and act as they do, in any and all situations.
Insight 3: From an evolutionary and historical perspective, humans as a species have been very focused on how physical evolution and development works in the rest of the natural world, likely because it is the most easily observed/measured. However for humans, as a higher-level cognitive species, our focus should be on mental/cognitive evolution and development. Unfortunately, we largely ignore our species’ cognitive development, and this is reflected from a historical standpoint where organizations, individuals, and societies, continue to deal with the exact same core issues over tens of thousands of years, for example:
- Organizations dealing with issues such as alignment of leadership, measuring performance, managing visually, reducing waste, aligning mindsets and behaviors, structuring performance management and rewards/consequences, creating consistency, driving innovation, etc.
- Individuals dealing with issues such as handling fear, insecurity, failure, addiction, depression, anger, etc.
- Society dealing with issues such as corruption, inequality, war, oppression, healthcare, education, racism, bigotry, etc.
Insight 4: I take notes on basically everything in my work and life (more on why in another article), and I use bulleted/numbered lists to organize the information. This naturally means that I need to categorize and group information together so that it can be organized under the correct higher level bullets. As I did this I found that all the notes, insights, etc. could always be grouped down to a very select few higher level bullets, and those higher level bullets/takeaways were always the same, no matter the topic, source, amount of information, etc.
What’s the problem to be solved? Why is this important?
Let’s start first with a few questions:
1 Do you have a clearly defined mental operating system for how you view the world, take inputs, analyze and evaluate, make decisions, and take action?
2 Similarly, does your company/organization have an operating system and principles for how they take in inputs, analyze and evaluate, make decisions, and take action?
3 Could you articulate that system and/or write it down?
4 Could you teach that operating system to somebody else?
For the vast majority of people and organizations across the world, the answer is “no” to all of the above questions.
This is a critical issue because these questions essentially define your entire life/organization, in 3 parts:
1 How you perceive, think, and act (essentially live) your daily life.
2 How your organization operates and what it stands for. Essentially a definition of culture, mindsets, and behaviors.
3 Whether or not you have a foundation upon which to improve your life or organization.
4 How you teach/educate (e.g. yourself, family, friends, employees, colleagues, etc.)
What most individuals and organizations end up doing, is living day to day “reinventing the wheel”, where every day, situation, interaction, etc. is another exercise in having to magically figure out what it means, what to think about it, and what to do about it.
This lack of a clear and concise system for how we think, act, educate, and govern, ultimately becomes the root cause behind all conflict, poor performance, anxiety, confusion, fear, insecurity, etc. We are constantly playing catch up and reacting mindlessly to the challenging world around us.
Conclusion
Coupling these insights and experiences, with 5,000+ additional hours of research conducted to validate the assumptions and details, led to the following 5 theories:
1. Our world always operates on a set of principles that guide an end to end process.
2. As part of that world, human existence also operates on a specific set of principles that guide an end to end process.
3. All specific disciplines in human life (e.g. economics, war, leadership, supply chains, depression, education, etc.) also operate on a specific set of principles that guide an end to end process.
4. The principles always hold true, barring exceptional circumstances such as the quantum universe
5. In order for humans to evolve cognitively, and work to effectively resolve the root cause of all critical human issues, we need to define the foundational and subject-specific principles, how they impact our day to day life, and how to implement them.
Approach and Solution
Pulling this all together is where the Principles-Based Operating System and Foundational Mental Principles come into play. They define both the basic mental principles by which a person or organization can operate more successfully in the world, as well as an entire operating system to bring structure to their life, work, and community.
The Principles-Based Operating System guides how you:
- Receive and perceive inputs from the world / what mindsets you hold.
- Analyze and evaluate the inputs.
- Make assumptions and decisions.
- Take action.
- Iterate and make continuous improvement.