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The Importance of Principle-Based Decision Making

by Jamie Flinchbaugh on 01-21-25

In my January 2025 newsletter, I highlighted the need for improving rapid, principle-based decision making. The reason principle-based decision making is important is that we can’t possibly anticipate, and therefore pre-reason, the decisions that we’ll have to make in the future. Faced with having to work at speed, without a principle-based approach we can often make unsound and regretted, or at the least, inconsistent decisions.

One current example of this is the resistance to DEI initiatives. While this resistance comes from many places, some of the most visible by design are the social media campaigns of Robby Starbuck. I’m not going to get into the meat of the campaigns themselves, but I will use them to highlight the need for principle-based decisions.

Starbuck’s campaigns require speed because they are designed to amplify and agitate while you spend time carefully considering your options. But without the time to do a study, engage employees, explore strategies, etc., what will drive your decisions about DEI participation? Without defined principles, there will be various degrees of panic or frustration, which is hardly a basis for sound decisions.

Ask yourself:
Do you know what’s important to you? Do you know what’s important to your employees? Why have you made the decisions you’ve made so far? Do you know what’s most essential to your policies, practices, or strategies? What are the ‘crown jewels’? 

One company that was subject to a Starbuck’s campaign decided to end their employee affinity groups.  These affinity groups had been in place to support employees for a long time and the decision was met with disappointment. However, if you know what’s important to you from a principle basis instead of an artifact basis, you can keep what’s most important to you and shed more superficial or cosmetic things. Or, you can decide that you’re simply going to stand your ground because you know who you are, what you’re doing, and why. Without principles, you are very likely to simply be a victim.

This is only one example, but it’s easy to project the scenario across a wide array of decisions. Whether involving supply chain disruptions, technology disruptions, employee shifts, regulatory changes, or economic headwinds, one thing is clear: you can’t spend all your time predicting the future. You have to be prepared to make decisions in a future you can’t predict, and principles are an essential foundation for doing so consistently.