If a Principle Can’t Change a Decision, It’s Decoration
Most company principles are written to be agreed with. Be customer focused. Move fast. Be curious. Take ownership.
Fine. But what happens when two sensible people disagree about what to build?
That is where a principle earns its place.
A useful principle should occasionally tell you not to do something you quite wanted to do. It should make a trade-off easier. It should narrow the decision.
A principle earns its place when it can settle an argument.
“Complexity always sends the bill later” means a new feature does not get judged only on whether it would be useful. It also has to justify the maintenance, interface, support and future decisions it creates.
“AI can read the record. It doesn’t get to rewrite history” means a beautifully generated answer still has to lead back to the evidence.
“If the software creates more work, something’s gone wrong” means an elegant knowledge-management workflow can still be a bad product if everybody has to remember to maintain it.
The wording matters less than the consequence. If a principle sounds good but never changes what you build, remove, question or refuse, it is probably just decoration.
We’ve written down 21 of the things we try not to forget.