Personalities, Principles, and Progress

I’m a strong believer in principles over personalities – in ALL aspects of life. Why? Because the fastest way to make an organization, company, family, or other group deteriorate is to put personalities over principles.

This is really a pretty profound concept, one that is often ignored or completely misunderstood.  However, anyone who has ever watched an organization start to go off a cliff because of one aggressive personality knows this is sufficiently damaging to warrant real and regular consideration.

Consider our nation’s political landscape. It’s more contentious than ever.  Some would describe it as downright ugly.  It doesn’t take a genius to note the reason: personalities have now become more important than principles. Dissent is not about the message, but about the messenger. Debate is about the people involved rather than the issues involved. It’s a prime example of how unpleasant the world can be when a handful of personalities become more important than the principles they claim to represent.

I believe organizations often cycle through the personality phase – a strong organization will eventually spit out the personality that is creating havoc, weak organizations will be slowly but surely destroyed by those aggressive personalities.  Think Bernie Madoff – his personality and reputation blinded people to his faults; many smart, successful folks stopped doing the typical due diligence involved in good investing. Even regulators gave him a pass. He’s a perfect example of the system favoring personality over principles.  Think the real estate bubble and crash – there were quite a few colorful personalities who carried this, like Andrew Mozilo. He became the poster child for blustering big talk that things are different now (i.e., the old principles no longer applied), and influenced a lot of people to make really bad choices.

I think it’s fair to say that humans can be very vulnerable to cult-like personalities: these people often have infectious enthusiasm and seemingly endless optimism. We just want them to be right because their message is that you get things you once thought impossible. They are the masters of if-it-sounds-too-good-to-be-true-throw-me-your-money-and-I-will-prove-to-you-it-is-possible.   It’s a sobering thought that so many of us are willing to ignore reality if someone persuasive tells  us the rules don’t apply.

As a society, we make progress when principles are so precious to us that we never allow personalities to hijack our ideals and beliefs.  We are willing to fight and defend our principles rather than let one personality tell us what those principles should be. This makes us less vulnerable to the smoke and mirrors that are essential to the mystique of the Big Personality.  A sure sign of danger in any organization, whether it be your local 12 step meeting,  your company, or even your family is when one personality begins to dictate the movement of the whole. That’s when it’s time to get back to basics – to the underlying principles that guide us in right choices – and make sure everyone is clear that certain principles cannot be altered just because someone talks loud enough.