Laurie Ruettimann Articulates Her Core Principles for Building and Leading Organizations

In a recent LinkedIn post, Laurie Ruettimann shares a candid look at her personal framework for building, leading, and sustaining organizations. This framework, she emphasizes, moves beyond traditional values lists and has minimal connection to conventional HR practices. Instead, it serves as her operational guide for assessing companies, advising executives, and determining where to invest her professional energy.

Ruettimann introduced her insights by stating:

I just published something I’ve never written down this explicitly: how I actually think about building, leading, and sustaining organizations.

A Framework Beyond Traditional HR

The core of Ruettimann’s recent articulation centers on a set of operating principles that guide her professional decisions. She differentiates this approach from typical corporate values, suggesting that her method is more pragmatic and action-oriented. As Laurie Ruettimann notes, this framework is not about a list of desired values but rather about the practical application of principles in real-world business scenarios.

She further clarified the nature of her principles:

It’s not a values list, and it has very little to do with HR. It’s the operating principles I use to evaluate companies, advise leaders, and decide where I spend my time.

This distinction highlights Ruettimann’s focus on a more fundamental, perhaps even philosophical, approach to organizational effectiveness. By separating her principles from standard HR functions, she implies a need for leaders to develop and apply their own unique criteria for success and sustainability.

Seeking Feedback on Core Principles

A significant aspect of Ruettimann’s post was her open invitation for discussion and feedback. She actively solicited the opinions of her network, indicating a belief in the collaborative nature of developing effective organizational strategies.

Ruettimann expressed her interest in engagement by asking her audience:

If you read it, I’m curious what you agree with, what you don’t, and what you think I missed.

This call for interaction underscores her perspective that even well-defined principles can benefit from external review and refinement. According to Ruettimann, the process of building and leading organizations is dynamic, requiring continuous learning and adaptation based on diverse viewpoints. Her willingness to share such personal operating principles and seek critique positions her as a leader keen on fostering robust dialogue within the business community about effective organizational design and leadership.