Let’s talk…
…about your North Star.
I have a good friend who introduced me to a concept called The North Star exercise. You may have heard of it, and there are a large number of references to this on the Web. So I claim no original thinking in the creation of this idea. (The implementation discussed below is my particular “riff” on the concept, but stays true to the original idea.)
In astronomy, the North Star (currently Polaris, but wait a few thousand years) sits almost directly over the North Pole. Unlike all the other stars in the night sky, it doesn’t move. All the rest of the sky rotates around it, rising and setting, but the North Star stays where it is.
This makes Polaris a great tool for navigating – it is always possible (at night) to know which direction is North, and then by extension the other directions on the compass. And if we want to head North, we simply keep our eye and our aim toward the North Star.
In business, the North Star exercise identifies the primary, overarching, guiding principal of the company. (The exercise can be used for specific initiatives in the company as well, although the application is a little different.) Everything that the company does should be assessed in terms of the North Star – and if an activity is leading the company adrift, then there needs to be a very good reason to follow through with it – or a course correction needs to be made.
Going through a North Star exercise for your business can be a great way to clarify exactly what your business is trying to do. It’s a very thought-provoking effort, often requiring several iterations to get to a workable version.
Here is how I learned it:
“In one sentence, identify why your company is in business, and what principal guides your firm.
“Then, for each word in that sentence, explain why you chose it. This is the truly educational part.”
As you can see, parsimony rules the day. The fewer words you can use to create your North Star, the fewer words you have to explicate. And the easier it will be for you and your team to understand.
But it has to be complete! It’s “cheating” to have a one word North Star, like “Service.”
It is in this balancing between brevity and completeness, refining the North Star and the explanations that go with it, where the real organizational learning happens. This is a group activity, if you want it to be; brainstorming, workshopping, and wordsmithing are great ways to get to a shared understanding of what your company is all about.
Once you get to the point that your satisfied both with the North Star and its exegesis, it becomes a kind of touchstone for initiatives you’re thinking about at your company. Does this activity move us forward, in the direction of our North Star? If not, why are we doing it?
If you find on a regular basis that you’re trying to justify activities that are NOT in alignment with your North Star, it’s time to ask a hard question: Is what we came up with as our guiding principal still correct? Does it need to be adjusted?
Or do we need to reassess what kind of business we are, and what kind of business we want to be? (These are not bad outcomes – but they cannot be ignored.)
I started my North Star with a list of about 65 words that pertain to what I do. I tried paring that down first to about 15 and finally got down to the seven I’ve shared below.
I had help from my friend and coach to refine this to its current version. It’s been beneficial to go through this to get clarity about what I do, and my North Star helps me when I need to make decisions about my business.
I would love to help you hammer out your North Star. Let’s talk.