Values

The core principles that define you

Values are the principles an organization keeps coming back to when it has to choose, and the most revealing test of them is what happens when they are costly to uphold.

Most organizations have values. They appear on websites, in employee handbooks, on the walls of meeting rooms. The interesting question is not what values an organization claims, but whether those values are visible in the decisions people make on ordinary days and in difficult ones.

Values that are genuinely embedded show up in how people talk to each other when things go wrong, in who gets given stretch opportunities, in which projects get funded and which get cut, in how the organization behaves when being ethical is inconvenient. They do not need to be consulted because they are already factored in.

Organizations sometimes mistake articulating values for having them. Putting words on a wall is the beginning of the work, not the end. What turns a stated value into a lived one is repetition, reinforcement, and the willingness to call a gap a gap.

How it shows up

How this facet of culture actually appears in everyday working life, and what a healthy version tends to look like compared to one that is strained or ignored.

Stated values

The principles the organization has formally named and committed to, typically through deliberate process and visible communication.

Lived values

The principles that actually shape daily decisions, visible in behavior, resource allocation, what gets celebrated, and what gets tolerated.

Healthy

People can point to specific decisions, recent and past, where the stated values visibly influenced the outcome, including in cases where following them was not the easiest path.

Strained

The stated values are well known but feel more like marketing than like genuine commitments, and people rarely connect day-to-day decisions back to them.

Questions to explore

Use these on your own or in a group. There are no right answers, only better conversations.

Which of our stated values would most people here say we genuinely live, and which would they say we are still working toward?
Can you name a recent decision where a stated value clearly shaped the outcome?
How were the current values arrived at, and do most people know that story?
When a value and a short-term business interest conflict, what tends to happen?
Are there values that feel like they belong to an earlier version of the organization and may need revisiting?

Things to notice

The more aspirational the stated values, the higher the bar for consistency. Claiming values the organization has not yet earned creates a credibility gap that is hard to close.
Values set at the founding of an organization can become outdated as the organization grows, diversifies, or shifts direction. Revisiting them periodically is not a sign of drift; it is a sign of honesty.
When values are decided by a small group and handed down rather than developed with broader input, they often feel like top-down messaging rather than something people recognize as their own.