IT IS IMPORTANT to avoid relegating the company’s founding principles to the ‘About Us’ page of the website. Instead, living them is necessary for guiding in a decision-making process, shaping the company’s culture, and connecting with customers. Entrepreneurs have to make tough choices every day. No matter the decision you are about to make, whether cutting costs or investing in a new market, the founding principles should be the bedrock that should help you to make better choices that gives you a competitive advantage.
Where you shape the business around its founding principles, while at the same time including the core values into its culture, it becomes possible for you to differentiate yourself, build loyalty for your brand, gain partners, and even empower the employees. With guiding principles that are strong, the company can get an identity and your customers find a reason for aligning with your organization.
With good founding principles, your company can set itself apart. This gives customers a reason for choosing your products or services over the competitors as they find the experience more personal. This is particularly the case in those industries where you are a commodity, and any differentiation opportunities do make a difference.
With some good founding principles, the company can empower its employees. It becomes possible for the company to recruit and retain easily. Employees will consider it a great place to work. This may even enable you to pay a little less in a situation where employees consider the compensation in terms of culture and the money.
It also becomes possible for you to build a loyalty for your brand. Where they are given a choice, consumers usually prefer to buy products from those companies that they share values with. Therefore, any company that has some clear and genuine values can get some devoted customers.
The guiding principles also play a pivotal role in guiding you through some hard times or even making strategic choices, particularly where your company has made a decision to move in a new direction. It will be easier for your employees, consumers and investors to understand your company’s evolution. It will also be possible for the company to gain partners as other organizations also want a company with which they can share their values. Since the potential partners will also need to make a choice, they will mostly try to align themselves with a company that has similar values. With strong principles, it becomes possible for them to choose your company over others.
An organization whose purpose can be defined by history and the future is considered well equipped to handle a weather pattern that is constantly changing. Therefore, it is possible for the founding principles of any company to prove to either be ruinous or virtuous. It is necessary for any organization to have some solid ones that not only define it, but help to convince the customers, employees and even partners to be associated with it.
