Values Are Not a Wall Poster

How to Make Values Actually Drive Your Business

Walk into almost any company’s office and you’ll find values on the wall. Integrity. Collaboration. Excellence. The words are everywhere - on posters, in employee handbooks, in the footer of recruiting emails. But in too many cases, they mean almost nothing.

Not because the people who wrote them weren’t sincere. But because values that live on walls and not in decisions, behaviours, and hiring choices are decorative, not functional. Employees know the difference immediately.

The companies that get values right - the ones where culture is a genuine competitive advantage - treat values as operational infrastructure, not brand collateral. They use them to hire, fire, promote, and make hard calls.

They represent the company at a cellular level – and they don’t grow stale. They are monitored and revisited when the company evolves. And most importantly, they hold leaders accountable, so that top down, every person across the entire team lives and reinforces them.

What Values Actually Are

Real, authentic, meaningful corporate values operate just like a person living their own values in life. They are the guiding principles and beliefs that your company as a whole stands behind and commits to upholding. They define what is and isn’t acceptable behaviour. They guide how decisions get made when the right answer isn’t obvious. And they tell the outside world - clients, candidates, partners, investors - what you actually stand for.

The key word is actual. Not aspirational in the sense of disconnected from reality, but aspirational in the sense of genuinely reflecting who your company is working to be. Strong values capture both who you are today and the direction you’re growing toward.

Values should be so shared, so essential to your core, you don’t even think of it as culture - it’s just how things work here.

The distinction matters because values that describe something that you’re not - and have no clear path to becoming - create cynicism faster than having no stated values at all. People are perceptive. They notice when what leadership says and what leadership does aren’t the same thing. It is fastest route to employee dissatisfaction, confusion, misalignment, and toxic culture.

You say you’re “Inclusive” but have no diversity in hiring and promoting people of all backgrounds. You claim to be “Welcoming” but have policies and behaviours that reward people keeping their head down, not speaking up, or worse, bullying others. You want to be “Innovative” but actively avoid taking risks or new ideas. Why would anyone trust and support your values if you are not actively living them?

The Business Case for Getting This Right

Clearly defined, genuinely lived values deliver measurable business outcomes. They make it easier to attract and retain the right people - candidates who share your beliefs will seek you out, and those who don’t will self-select out before joining (saving everyone time, money, and pain).

Authentic values make decision-making faster and more consistent, because your team has a shared framework for evaluating choices. And most importantly to your bottom line - they differentiate you in market, particularly as clients and candidates increasingly choose who they work with based on alignment of values, not just quality of product.

Retail Insider survey showed 62% of consumers made purchases based on alignment with their personal values and Dentsu Superpowers Index found 'values alignment' as a key driver for B2B decision-makers with trust in a company remaining the #1 factor in buying.

There is also a direct connection between staff satisfaction and customer satisfaction. If your team is happy, loyal, productive it directly flows to - and is reflected by - your clients. Staff attitudes towards collaboration, dedicated service, ‘going above and beyond’ are shown to be anywhere from 2% to 20% higher for companies with values alignment and strong culture. (sources: Casidy & Lie, Industrial Marketing Management, UMD Dissertation, QUIS18 Study)

The fact is culture without shared values creates an inherent fragility. It relies on individual personalities and the presence of specific leaders to sustain it. When those people leave - and they always eventually do - culture built on personality evaporates. Values-driven culture, by contrast, outlasts individuals because it’s embedded in the very foundation of how the organization operates.

What Companies Get Wrong

The most common mistake is choosing values that sound impressive rather than ones that are inherently true with authentically definition. ‘Integrity,’ ‘Excellence,’ and ‘Innovation’ are on so many values lists they can easily lose meaning. They describe what every company claims to value, which means they describe no company in particular.

Look at how the companies with the strongest cultures approach this differently. Virgin Atlantic’s values include ‘We think customer,’ ‘We lead the way,’ and ‘Together we make the difference’ - specific, action-oriented, and recognizably theirs. Atlassian goes further: ‘Open company, no bullshit’ and ‘Don’t #@!% the customer.’ Patagonia’s values include ‘Cause no unnecessary harm’ and ‘Not bound by convention.’ These aren’t aspirational posters. They’re commitments that create accountability.

The second common mistake is creating values in isolation - by leadership, without genuine input from the people who do the work every day. Values developed this way may be technically accurate to a founder’s vision but feel imposed on the team. Co-creation not only support the most authentic reflection of what is ‘real’ but it also builds ownership. When team’s can see their reality reflected and have a true sense of ownership – that how values stick.

How to Build Values That Actually Work

Start with what’s already true. Before you workshop aspirational language, look at what your best people already do. What behaviours show up consistently in the people who perform best and fit best? What principles guide decisions when things get difficult? What do clients consistently say about what it’s like to work with you? These observations are the raw material of authentic values.

Apply a practical test to each value you’re considering:

• Is this specific to us, or could any company claim it?

• Can we point to real examples of this showing up in our decisions and behaviours?

• Are we willing to make hard calls - in hiring, promotions, client relationships, product or partnership choices - based on this?

• If a leader violated this value, would there be a consequence?

If the answer to any of these is no, revise or cut. Better to have three real values than eight performative ones.

Making Them Operational

Defined values are only the starting point. To become functional, they need to show up in every part of how your company operates:

• Hiring: Use values as explicit criteria in interviews. Ask candidates for specific examples of behaviours that align with each value. Assess culture fit as seriously as skill fit.

• Onboarding: New team members should understand your values in their first week - not just as written statements but through stories, examples, and direct conversations about what they look like in practice.

• Performance: Build values into how you evaluate and recognize performance. Reward the behaviours that reflect them. Address the behaviours that don’t.

• Leadership accountability: Values only have credibility if leadership models them. Publicly. Consistently. Especially when it’s hard.

Values that live only in documents are decoration. Values that live in decisions are culture. The distinction is entirely in how seriously you take the implementation.