If you have a compass, you never get lost. If you don’t have a compass, go up the sky and find “North Star.” You can adjust your route based on that simple direction.
Southwest Airlines has a core & simple metric: THE low-fare airline.
“Let’s think about the ideas driving Southwest Airlines as concentric circles. The central circle, the core, is “THE low-fare airline.” But the very next circle might be “Have fun at work.” Southwest’s employees know that it’s okay to have fun so long as it doesn’t jeopardize the company’s status as THE low-fare airline. A new employee can easily put these ideas together to realize how to act in unscripted situations. For instance, is it all right to joke about a flight attendant’s birthday over the P.A.? Sure. Is it equally okay to throw confetti in her honor? Probably not—the confetti would create extra work for cleanup crews, and extra clean-up time means higher fares. (Made to Stick, Chip Heath)”
Simple direction transforms your entire organization to be self-managed individuals. They have a simple direction to follow.