If we asked you to tell us what you think that COP was, we have to assume your answer would be something like “Happiness,” or “The Real Thing.” It’s not. The Coca-Cola Company’s Central Operating Principle since 1945 has been: “Put a coke within an arm’s length of everyone on the planet.” Clearly, it’s a marching order. It also makes it clear that the company’s operating principle is not taste or joy.
Its operating principle is distribution. You can’t enjoy coke unless you can access it. No matter how wonderful an experience having a Coke might be; that experience is not possible unless you can get a Coke. Simple. Brilliant. Energizing. Prescriptive. Now that is a Central Operating Principle.
At this point, we had created the Actionable Insighting phase of what would become Thinking Whole. We called it, simply “the 7-3-1 process” and it looked like this.
As time went by, we realized that the same sequence, in reverse, could provide a framework for actionability. If Actionable Insighting leads to the crystallization of the Central Operating Principle, then the Central Operating Principle should guide the ultimate executions (using the same approach) of that principle:
