Principles don't change, methods do

I ran a workshop recently on being an engineering manager and being a good leader. One question kept catching people off guard. What is your philosophy for your team? Most people had never written it down. I hadn't either. That surprised me. We all carry one. We rarely name it.

There is a quote I have mangled a few times: "Principles don't change. Methods do." I think that is the right frame.

Principles are who you are. What you value. What you will not trade away. They are pillars. You build your philosophy on top of them, and you rely on them when the day gets hard.

Methods are how you deliver those principles into the world. The tools. The style. The way you open a 1:1. The way you handle a difficult conversation. The way you run a stand-up. Methods have to move. A message that lands today may not land tomorrow. A message that bounces off one person may be exactly what another needs. Teams are at different stages. People are in different places. Society moves. The way I was coached at 25 would not work on a 25-year-old today, and the way I was coached then was already strange to people ten years older than me. That is normal. That is how methods behave.

The mistake is holding a method as if it were a principle. When a method stops working, you have to change it, not defend it. When a principle is under pressure, you hold the line.

Define your principles. Know them well enough to say them out loud in three sentences or less. Then look hard at your methods. Iterate the ones that are not landing anymore. Keep the ones that still do. Expect that set to change across your career.