HubSpot Academy’s Eight Guiding Principles

Align a team, simplify decision making, and create a culture where everyone understands what’s important.

What are guiding principles?

HubSpot Academy uses guiding principles to ensure all team members are working towards the same common goal and we all share a bigger purpose.

These eight guiding principles are the guardrails that guide our collective actions, habits, and behaviors. These principles create a compass to which we can refer to when something is in doubt, or when we need to take a stand, evaluate a particular opportunity or situation, get guidance for prioritization or decision-making, or use good judgment.

HubSpot Academy has had a set of guiding principles since December 2013, and going into 2020, we’ve decided to update our principles and their definitions. But why?

“Mindless habitual behavior is the enemy of innovation.” — Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Professor of Business at Harvard Business School

One study of more than 1,000 firms in the Great Places to Work database, conducted by MIT Economics, revealed a strong correlation between financial performance and the degree to which employees believed their company’s values and principles were being practiced.

One snippet from their report stands out: “…we find that proclaimed values appear irrelevant…” Vague, meaningless, or ill-conceived principles can cause problems for your culture. Simply proclaiming you have principles means nothing if the team doesn’t use them — and mindlessly following irrelevant, outdated principles can hurt your team’s ability to innovate and grow. So after seven years of using the same principles, it was time for HubSpot Academy to audit and refresh our guiding principles.

Our goal was to go into 2020 with the right set of principles that the full team is ready to align around and regularly put into practice to support our purpose. And our purpose is to educate and inspire people so that we, together, transform the way the world does business.

Our Guiding Principles

Execute with excellence.

As a leader, you consistently produce remarkable work that team members are proud to put the Academy name on. But remarkable work isn’t just the destination, it’s the process. You are accountable for outputs that reduce friction and don’t cause pain for others. Benchmark against the best. Be intentional in where you put your focus.

Educate with passion.

As a leader, you use your knowledge and expertise to spark curiosity, motivate, and inspire people to reach their goals. Care deeply about what you do. Enthusiasm matters.

Create equitable experiences.

As a leader, you consistently create global, accessible learning experiences so that all learners have rightful opportunities to develop their knowledge and expertise. Solve for scale.

Foster meaningful collaboration.

As a leader, you seek out opportunities to work with others to better serve our learners. Prioritize collaboration both internally and externally. Run meetings efficiently, listen attentively, treat others respectfully, and facilitate collaboration between others. Build your team.

Put the user first.

As a leader, you put the user first and solve for impact. Empower users to reach where they want to go through actionable steps. Remove friction and create outstanding experiences. Exceeding user expectations is a must.

Never settle.

As a leader, you do things differently than the way they’ve always been done. Challenge the status quo and identify room for improvement that solves for the business. Take the leap and address fears head-on. Experiment, scale your successes, and treat failures as learning opportunities.

Always be learning.

As a leader, you are innately curious and cultivate a growth mindset. Push your own boundaries and explore new areas of growth. Seek out diverse perspectives and be comfortable challenging your beliefs. Find ways to be better — there’s an opportunity to learn from everyone and everything.

Authenticity.

As a leader, you create the space for everyone to be their authentic selves. Celebrate each other and be an uncompromising champion for inclusivity, diversity, and belonging.

Our Auditing Process

Step 1: Ensure you have the right purpose. If guiding principles exist to align a team around a common goal and shared purpose, you first need to ensure the purpose you want to rally around is truly the right purpose. Check with your leadership team and align around your purpose.

Step 2: For existing principles, check with your team on what specifically needs to be addressed. Back in June 2019, we had team members anonymously vote on and rank which principles they felt needed the most reworking. This gave us a crystal-clear picture of which principles needed to be prioritized and reworked versus which ones needed to be moderately tweaked versus which ones needed to be left alone. This was our roadmap.

Step 3: One by one, have an open discussion about each principle individually. State both the principle and definition out loud, and then allow a few minutes of contemplation. Your job in this stage is just to listen attentively and take good notes. What is the essence of this principle? What would people change or update to make it better? This is the place for folks to hash out and brainstorm potential updates.

Step 4: Synthesize notes. When going back through your notes in the previous step, this period of data analysis is not a place to advocate for your favorite snippets, notes or thoughts amongst the feedback. Your analysis should focus on honoring the input, seeing what themes and feedback gained traction, and learning what you can build upon for a new set of principles.

Step 5: Supplement feedback with research. Many companies make their guiding principles, shared values, and culture codes public and easily accessible. Do proper research for inspiration. What companies do you admire? And do they have principles you can review? Help energize the process with principles, sound bites, and examples that resonate with you.

Step 6: Re-own the process and draft the updates. Your team has been surveyed, brainstorms have been had, and research has been conducted. Take all of these inputs you’ve successfully sourced and begin drafting a set of guiding principles. Don’t try and incorporate all feedback and all research at this stage — just tackle the big boulders and get the most pertinent themes down in writing.

Step 7: A final round of feedback. Present the drafts of your new principles back to the team. Source another round of feedback from team members to ensure you’re on the right track. Feedback at this stage boils down into two types: overall theme and word choice. First, for the overall theme, is the essence of the principle correct? And can people see it rolling into their operating system? And second, for word choice, are the words used to convey each principle’s essence appropriately and effectively?

Step 8: Codify and embed. With the last round of feedback completed, make the appropriate edits and check back in with your leadership one final time before locking them in. Is leadership ready to lean on principles for communicating opportunities of alignment, moments of gratitude, and coaching moments? If so, it’s time to officially roll them out. To embed, help team members memorize and synthesize the new principles. Quiz people on definitions. Ask for examples of usage. Celebrate success by attributing it to a principle.

Step 9: Principles are fluid — not cement. Be prepared to refresh and audit as needed when it becomes apparent a principle no longer applies or aligns the team around a shared purpose.

Do you agree or disagree with any of our principles? Is anything missing? Do you have your own set of guiding principles? Comment below and let us know.

Or do you want to talk more about guiding principles? Learn more about creating your own? Find me on LinkedIn or Twitter.