• How to Deal with Principles vs. Results

    edited by Alexander Becker on August 28, 2006 | Link

    Do you stick to your principles or do you do whatever it takes do achieve the envisioned results? As long as your goals match your principles, you don't have any problem. But what about the case where your principles conflict with the perfect desired outcome for a given situation?

    Results-orientation is the pursuing of goals with the attitude of doing whatever it takes to succeed. In pure results-orientation, the end justifies the means. You set the boundaries. Enter your principles, supposed to pre-set the boundaries according to moral or ethic considerations.

    Sticking to principles is the balancing act of goal-setting and achieving while maintaining a personal set of values, the foundation of all decision-making processes. Principles are basic assumptions about the way things work or are supposed to behave under certain circumstances. Principles are ethic and moral yet subjective standards, each set and weighed individually. Principles are predetermined by definition. You apply your once established set of principles to any situation and base your decisions on the relation -- and potential match -- of static principle and dynamic situation.

    Your principles are supposed to help you -- and they do, most of the time, they help you through preventing decisions that contradict your values and they sometimes hinder you when preventing breakthroughs where your underlying beliefs are limiting your reasoning for whatever reason.

    Let's take a look at some random example principles:

    1. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
    2. Never give up, under no circumstances.
    3. Make sure to not lose your face.
    4. Guaranteed mutual destruction, as in a nuclear threat scenario.

    I subscribe to #1, especially since others and you are probably one anyway. This principle is rather universal and it is hard to reject.

    As for #2, sometimes you have to give up, only to come back later. Take a look at ancient chinese war strategies vs. western warfare -- the way of the water vs. the rigidity of the stone.

    The answer to #3 is: Why not? After all you're only losing your face, not yourself. I understand that it depends on circumstances and environment, though.

    While being particularly intriguing intellectually, #4 is a principle that doesn't have to work this way, sufficient willpower on any one part of the threatening partners would not only make the principle obsolete.

    A radical solution is the giving up of all principles and to solely focus on accomplishing results. Take a look at willpower, for example: Willpower regularly crushes every principle that crosses its way. The people who are guided and driven by an iron will do not seem to care about principles.

    This is not to be taken as advice against principles and the sticking to them. You have to choose, ideally on a case-by-case basis, whether results-orientation is worth the giving up of principles. Observe your principles and how they guide your actions and influence and shape your results. Once aware of your axioms, you are able to consciously decide whether to continue holding them up or abandoning and replacing them with improved assumptions about reality.

    Since they are the foundations of every action you undertake, make sure to thoroughly review your principles, do not carry with you -- and let them cloud your results -- principles that are mere axioms, based on beliefs that used to be true, but are long proven outdated.

    An elegant option is to intend your results to match your principles, although at least some of your results will be altered by the shifted intention. Ultimately elegant is to intend your principles to match your desired results.

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