LDRDocs/Foundations and Governance/Guiding Principles.md

# LDR Guiding Principles

We strive to live and breathe by our guiding principles. We believe that through these principles we can improve lives, for ourselves and our customers.

1.  **We are motivated.** Everything starts with motivated people. We strive to understand what motivates people and how it can be harnessed.
    
2.  **We are obsessed with the customer.** We work tirelessly to earn the trust of customers and solve their needs, whatever they are. Every ask is an opportunity to delight our customers. We make short term sacrifices to earn lifetime loyalty.
    
3.  **We do what we say.** We do what we say, and say what we do. We decide what we are going to do, and we work towards it regardless of roadblocks or challenges. We under promise and over deliver. When challenges arise or something changes, we are proactive about communicating in a frank and earnest way. There is no confusion or surprise when we operate this way.
    
4.  **We do the right thing.** Period.
    
5.  **We persevere.** We believe in the power of walking the hard road, finding comfort in discomfort. We seek difficult challenges and push as hard as we can. Our collective resilience is unexpected in this day, age, and industry. All the best things in life are on the other side of fear. We find comfort in discomfort. We relentlessly improve and find innovative solutions. Calm seas do not make good sailors, nor do winners play it safe.
    
6.  **We value ideas over hierarchy.** Good ideas can come from anywhere, inside or outside our company. We don’t allow rules or hierarchy to get in the way.
    
7.  **We are humbly confident.** We approach situations from a mind set of “we can solve this, we will find a way”. We do not brag or exaggerate, and we do not say “we can’t do it” or “this is too hard”. We don’t limit ourselves with fear or doubt.
    
8.  **We value time.** Time is the only thing anyone has. We seek to ensure the time of our customers, employees, and partners is always valued, respected, and honored. We constantly seek to maximize the impact of our actions and usage of our time. Through this, we can do more with less, and move faster than any competition.
    
9.  **We act like owners.** We look for problems to solve and we solve them. We help each other and those who matter to us. We have a bias for action and accountability. When we make mistakes, we own up to them. We learn from our mistakes and try again until we succeed.
10. **We make it fun.** Period.

## How these principles are applied
These principles are intended to be the "spirit" of the law and the factors we consider when making decisions. A person who does something we initially dislike but who has done so in a manner that demonstrates understanding of the principles should be granted a pass.

## How to interpret the principles
The principles were written as above by one of our founders, Jason, at the beginning of the company. They were condensed to fit on a single page. This section talks about the deeper meanings and applications of them.

A principle is meaningless when it's only aspirational. To be effective and understood, each principle needs to explain what is being prioritized over something else, and that's what this section aims to do.

### 1. We are motivated
This means we prioritize analyzing the motivations of ourselves and others before making decisions, rather than making assumptions or jumping to conclusions.

This is especially true when it comes to unwanted or unexpected results or behaviors. Where possible, we strive to figure out what motivated the actions and harness that for positive gain, rather than simply assume a person has bad intentions.

### 2. We are obsessed with the customer
We focus on building long term, repeating relationships with healthy businesses rather than making a quick buck. Every time we make a decision that affects customers we need to consider how it will effect their business, employees, and income.

Put together with the 1st principle, before we make changes or decisions we strive to think about how it will benefit customers. If we can't identify how something benefits, or at least doesn't inconvenience a customer, we don't recommend doing it. For instance, we don't want to do something like change our business hours to be more convenient for ourselves if that will aggravate our customers.

### 3. We do what we say
This means we are careful not to commit to things we aren't positive we can deliver, and if some issue happens we try to communicate about it before someone has to ask us what's going on.

The power of "no" is very important -- if someone asks us to do something and we don't think it can be done, we should say that instead of getting people's hopes up. By the same token, if we agree to do something and then find out it's not as easy as we though, we strive to communicate that before being asked what the problem is.

### 4. We do the right thing
We strive to prioritize the greatest good for the most people at the end of the day, even if that means short-term pain or difficult situaions. When we find ourselves tempted to make selfish decisions at the expense of others we strive to stop and dig deep into why we're even thinking about that.

### 5. We persevere
We don't just give up immediately when something's not working well, and we try not to let fear of failure hold us back unecessarily. This means when we commit to doing a project, we do so with the committment of seeing it through to the end, even if it really sucks to do that.

### 6. We value ideas of heirarchy
Ideas are often worthless, and the execution of them is what matters. It doesn't really matter where an idea came from, it's about who is able to execute it. That said, we want to avoid the common organizational problem of good ideas being supressed, discounted, or stolen.

In practice, this means upholding radical transparency within our organization so the most people possible can grasp reality and put forth ideas about it. However, we have to balance that with the amount of organizational bandwidth any individual is allowed to consume. We try to do that by creating methods any member of the company can use to voice ideas clearly, efficiently, and safer without bogging everyone down.

Our QC Report system is an example of this: it's an anonymous way anyone can point out a concern or make a suggestion that can be read and then chat about by anyone who works with us. That allows anyone to surface an idea and bring it to the forefront of discussion without interrupting other people or sidetracking conversations.

### 7. We are humbly confident
This is really about experiments and trying new things.

When something new comes up we're unfamiliar with we strive to at least try it before getting bogged down worrying about all the what if's and corner cases.

This has a lot to do with how our company started. Our founders worked somewhere else that was winding down operations and some customers asked for an alternative. Before worrying about even getting insurance or even a corporate bank account, Jason and Brice found a warehouse they could sublet without a lease, and just *tried* it for a month.

If they had spent months planning and reseaching every kind of problem that could happen, we wouldn't be here.

Many people and organizations limit themselves by being overly risk-averse. They are tempted to spend an inordinate amount of time planning, worrying about all the details, and quibbling about fears. We strive not to be that way, and first test whether an idea even makes sense by trying it.

### 8. We value time
We try to invest time now to save time later. We try to avoid spending all our time doing repetive tasks, especially ones that make us unhappy. We try to avoid the attitude of "work harder" or "do it faster", and instead try to think like the laziest person you could ever imagine.

For example, if there is a door that sticks and we have to open that door 5-6 times a day for the forseeable future, we believe it's a better use of time to spend an hour fixing the door. That way, it's just one less thing we have to do from now on, so we can focus on things that make us happy.

### 9. We act like owners
We try to look for problems that need solved and find solutions without being asked to do so. This can mean our organization is really unstructured in some areas, which is difficult for people who like being told what to do.

It's like this because we're a B2B solutions provider -- our customers are business owners who want us to solve problems for them. To be good at that, we have to be good at solving our own problems without being told what to do or waiting for permission. It's often much better to call out something we think is a problem, announce what we plan to do, and then just do it unless someone objects.

This also means that rather than devoting resources to making sure people do things like mow the lawn or clean the bathroom, we put the tools where everybody can access them. If the lawn is still a problem, it means nobody cares enough to do anything about it.

This is always a point of contention within our organization, especially among newcomers. It's easy to see that various "common sense" issues get basically no attention, and that can be frustrating for people. However, operating this way is what's allowed us to grow into the business we are and it's crucial to our success. Our best ideas and projects came from people taking the sort of initiative this allows for.

### 10. We make it fun
No matter what is going on, we try to prioritize making the situation fun. We believe an angry or upset person can't do their best work and it's bad for everyone if we take ourselves too seriously.

A core insight we have is the whole supply chain is mad. Thing about it: everywhere from the truck driver, the cashier, the warehouse worker, to the consumer is upset. Nobody can seem to fix any of the issues. Our theory is that's *because* everyone is upset. Even when something bad or inconvenient happens we recommend trying to make solving it fun and engaging.