Core principles, most people have them. To an extent, organizations do as well. Anchoring to core principles allows people to maintain objectivity.
In my assessment, having a reference to return to is essential to brining people together. It helps galvanize us when times get tough. The anchors help keep us firmly plant when success overwhelms us.
In The Flow System (TFS), the core principles are:
- Customer 1st.
- The FLOW of value.
- The Triple Helix of Flow TM
- Complexity Thinking
- Distributed Leadership
- Team Science
The robust nature of the principles could be summarized this way.
By having a laser-like focus on our customer, we have an opportunity to flow value to the customer with them in mind. This is based because the organization embraces the Triple Helix of Flow. This support reconfiguring the company using complexity thinking, distributed leadership, and team science to adapt to the customers’ changing desires, needs, and wants.
The Past Informs The Future
There are a few passages from “Today and Tomorrow” by Henry Ford that are worth sharing.
“You may take something which people already know about and try to make a better design than is being offered. That might be the course to follow in commodities, but probably a better way is to judge the wants of the people by your own wants.
Then start from where you stand and let the public make your business for you. The public and only the public can make a business.”
Today and Tomorrow page 14
“That is the appeal of modern business to the young man.: he can begin with an organization whose crude experimental days are over and which stands able to do the things it was organized to do, and to do greater things because increased experience lead to greater and more successful experiment.”
Today and Tomorrow page 19
“Real business creates its own customers.”
Today and Tomorrow page 48
“Our own attitude is that we are charged with discovering the best way of doing everything, and that we must regard every process employed in manufacturing as purely experimental. If we reach a stage in production which seems remarkable as compared with what has gone before, then that is the stage of production and nothing more.. It is not and cannot be anything more than that. We know from the changes that have already been brought about that far greater changes are to come, and that therefore we are not performing a single operation as well as it ought to be performed.”
Today and Tomorrow page 48
Core Principles Across Time
Looking back nearly 100 years, Henry Ford was ahead of his time. He wrote about the concept of “Customer 1st“, creating value, and complexity thinking.
The quotes above are useful in anchoring our thinking about TFS and its impact today and into the future. Consider what you may be missing as you start your own TFS journey.
Reference to TFS —
©2019 Professor John Turner, Nigel Thurlow, Brian Rivera. The Flow System™ is offered for license under the Attribution license of Creative Commons, accessible at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode and also described in summary form at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ By utilizing this Site and any information presented you acknowledge and agree that you have read and agree to be bound by the terms of the Attribution license of Creative Commons. The Flow System™, The DNA of Organizations™, and The Triple Helix of Flow™ are all trademarks of the copyright holders.
