How a principle builds and destroys a business?

Principles are the building blocks of success. They create attitudes; attitudes form skills; and skills make systems. In business sense, a business principle creates business attitude, that attitude establishes business skill, and that skill give birth to business systems. Thus, a principle or a belief is the mother of all attributes of a person. A good principle crafts a good businessman, and a good businessman does good business. So specifically, how does a principle build a business? Let us consider an entrepreneur whose belief in life is to preserve justice and equality among all people. His values and attitudes are based on that principle. He is just, responsible and accountable. With his responsibility and accountability, he doesn’t stop learning to become capable of managing his business well. With all his knowledge, he formulates and creates systems that are aligned to benefit all his business stakeholders (owner, investors, creditors, workers and customers). His systems in running his business protect the owner, investors and creditors. Those systems also compensate well his workers and guarantee the satisfaction of his customers. Consequently, his investors continue to invest, and his creditors continue to lend their money on him. Likewise, his employees become happy, motivated and productive. Furthermore, his customers consistently patronize his products and services and continue to grow in numbers. Eventually, his principle builds and runs his business into success.

Now, what if a businessman has a wicked principle? How does it affect his business? Let us reckon a business owner whose principle in life is to prioritize profit above all. That belief forms an attitude of selfishness and greediness. Hence, he is used and skilled in maximizing profit but lacks care for the people around him. Thus, he creates systems to maximize his revenue without being prudent to the wellness of his customers. He sells products without assuring quality just to reduce cost and increase sales. His employee benefit system does not remunerate his workers in a just and generous manner to reduce personnel cost and maximize his net profit. He is fun of using funds to spend and generate income but forgets to pay-off his creditors and investors. As a result, his customers becomes dissatisfy and never comeback again. His employees become over-utilized, exhausted and unhappy, resulting into a very low employee turnover rate. Also, his investors lose trust and confidence in him and his creditors started to give him negative credit scores. In the end, his company loses money, stability and credibility.

Those two scenarios above can be very true. And both of those consequences (bad or good) can happen to all of us. It can occur seriously inside our company. It can also affect our business, may it be a small or large business. One good principle may bring us overall success. But one false principle could also lead us to a great tragedy. As we can all experience, principles are already part of our daily activities in life. But what most people don’t know is that these principles (simple or sophisticated, shallow or deep, right or wrong, and what ever principle is that) they have a great impact in the results of whatever we do. They are the seeds and the roots of whatever fruits we get in life. So the challenge here is this… let’s stop for a while and ask ourselves. Are we having the right principles in life?

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