How to Write Company Core Values That Employees Actually Live By
You’ve seen the framed poster in the lobby. “Integrity. Excellence. Innovation. Teamwork.” Generic words that could describe any company on earth. Your employees walk past it every day without a second glance. When you hired that technically brilliant person who turned out to be toxic, nobody referenced those values. When you had to make a hard call about a difficult customer, those words didn’t help.
Here’s the uncomfortable truth about company core values: most of them are meaningless because they were written to sound good rather than to be useful. Real core values—the kind employees actually live by—work differently. They’re specific enough to guide real decisions, uncomfortable enough to filter out people who don’t fit, and true enough that your team would recognize them even if they’d never seen them written down.
The Difference Between Aspirational and Operational Values
Most companies confuse what they wish they were with what they actually are. Aspirational values describe the culture you’d like to have someday. Operational values describe how your best people already behave when nobody’s watching.
Aspirational values sound noble: “We put customers first.” Operational values sound specific: “We’d rather lose money on a job than leave a customer worse off than we found them.”
The problem with aspirational values isn’t that they’re wrong—it’s that they’re useless. When your service manager is standing in a customer’s driveway deciding whether to warranty a repair that’s technically outside the coverage period, “customer first” doesn’t tell them anything. They need to know: does this company actually eat costs to do right by people, or is that just something we say?
Operational values come from observation, not imagination. They describe the patterns you’d see if you followed your best employees around for a week. They’re already true—your job is to name them, not invent them.
How to Discover Your Real Core Values
You don’t create core values. You discover them. They already exist in the DNA of your company—in the people who’ve been with you longest, in the decisions that felt obvious even when they were hard, in the behaviors that make someone fit or not fit your culture.
Start with your best people. Think about the three to five employees you’d clone if you could. Not just your highest performers—your best culture fits. The ones who make everyone around them better. The ones who handle problems the way you would.
What do they have in common beyond their skills? How do they treat coworkers when things go wrong? What do they do when nobody’s checking their work? How do they handle frustrated customers? What would they never do, even if they could get away with it?
Now think about the people who didn’t work out—especially the ones who were technically competent but culturally wrong. What was missing? What did they do that drove everyone crazy? The inverse of those behaviors often points toward your real values.
Finally, look at your own decisions. When you’ve made hard calls that cost you money or convenience, what principle were you protecting? When you’ve fired someone who was hitting their numbers, what did they violate? When you’ve gone to bat for an employee against a customer, what were you standing for?
The answers to these questions reveal your actual operating values. Your job now is to articulate them clearly enough that others can apply them without you in the room.
The 3-7 Rule: Why More Values Means Less Clarity
Three to seven core values. That’s the range that works. Fewer than three and you haven’t captured enough to be useful. More than seven and nobody can remember them, which means they won’t use them.
I’ve seen companies with twelve core values, each one reasonable on its own. The problem is that when everything is a priority, nothing is. Your team can’t hold twelve principles in mind when they’re making split-second decisions in the field. They need a short list they can actually remember.
Five is usually the sweet spot. It’s enough to capture the distinct elements of your culture without overwhelming people. Each value should represent something different—not five variations on “be nice to people.”
If you’re struggling to narrow down, ask: which of these would we still hold onto even if it became a competitive disadvantage? The ones you’d sacrifice profit to protect are your real core values. The ones you’d quietly abandon when times got tough are preferences, not principles.
Writing Values Specific Enough to Make Real Decisions
The test of a useful core value is simple: can it tell you what to do in a specific situation? If your value is “integrity,” that’s not specific enough. Everyone thinks they have integrity. What does integrity mean at your company?
Compare “Integrity” to “We tell customers the truth even when it costs us the sale.” Now you know exactly what to do when a homeowner asks if they really need the expensive option. You tell them the truth. Even if it means recommending a competitor. That’s specific enough to guide behavior.
Compare “Teamwork” to “We finish together—nobody leaves until the job is done.” Now your crew knows what’s expected when one truck falls behind. That’s not a suggestion; it’s how things work here.
Compare “Excellence” to “We fix problems before customers know they exist.” Now your technician knows they don’t wait to be told about the small issue they noticed. They handle it proactively because that’s what excellence means here.
Each value should be specific enough that someone could disagree with it. If everyone on earth would claim your value, it’s not distinctive enough to be useful. “We work hard” isn’t a value—it’s table stakes. “We’d rather turn down work than do it halfway” is a value that some companies would genuinely reject.
Using Core Values in Hiring, Reviews, and Terminations
Core values are only real if they have consequences. That means they show up in your hiring process, your performance reviews, and your termination decisions.
In hiring, every candidate should be evaluated against every core value. Not “do they seem like they’d fit” but “give me a specific example of when you demonstrated this behavior.” If a value is “own your mistakes publicly,” ask them to tell you about a time they admitted an error to their boss or a customer. Listen for whether they blame others, minimize the mistake, or take genuine ownership.
In reviews, core values should carry equal weight with performance metrics. Someone can hit all their numbers and still be a culture problem. The plumber who’s technically excellent but makes the office staff miserable is failing half the job. Evaluate both, and be honest when someone excels at one but not the other.
In terminations, core values give you clarity and legal defensibility. When you’ve documented that someone repeatedly violated a specific, written value—and you’ve tried to correct it—the decision becomes clearer. “This person doesn’t share our values” is vague and risky. “This person has been coached three times on our value of ‘tell customers the truth even when it costs us the sale’ and continues to oversell services” is specific and documented.
The hard part: you have to be willing to fire high performers who violate values. If you keep the toxic top performer, you’ve told everyone that values are negotiable. That single decision will undo a year of culture work.
Rolling Out Values Without the Corporate Cringe
Your team has seen corporate initiatives come and go. They’re braced for the eye-roll moment. You can avoid it by being honest about the process and immediate about the application.
Don’t unveil values in a big ceremony. Instead, share them in a regular team meeting. Explain that you didn’t invent these—you identified them by watching how your best people already operate. Name specific people and specific behaviors that exemplify each value. Make it clear this isn’t about changing who you are; it’s about being explicit about what already makes you different.
Then immediately use them. The next hiring decision, reference the values out loud. The next customer issue, frame the solution in terms of your values. The next time someone does something great, connect it to a specific value when you praise them.
Within 90 days, your team should hear values referenced in real decisions at least weekly. Not forced, not awkward—just naturally woven into how you talk about work. “That’s exactly what ‘fix problems before customers know they exist’ looks like” is a complete sentence your foreman should hear themselves saying.
The Connection Between Lived Values and Team Trust
When values are real, something shifts in your team. People stop wondering what you’d want them to do. They know, because the values tell them. That certainty builds trust—both in leadership and in each other.
When a technician makes a call in the field that costs the company money but aligns with your values, they shouldn’t have to worry about whether they’ll be supported. The values already told them what to do. And when you back them up, you’ve proven the values are real.
This compounds over time. Every decision that aligns with values reinforces them. Every time someone references a value when explaining their choice, it becomes more embedded. Eventually, new hires absorb the culture not from a poster but from watching how decisions get made every day.
Signs Your Values Aren’t Working Yet
- Your team can’t recite your values without looking them up
- You’ve never turned down a candidate because of values fit
- Performance reviews don’t mention values at all
- Someone who violates values regularly is still employed
- Employees would be surprised by what your values say
- Leadership makes decisions that contradict stated values
Getting Started This Week
Block two hours. Write down the names of your three best culture fits. List the behaviors they share that have nothing to do with technical skill. Now list the behaviors of your worst culture fits—the ones who technically performed but damaged everything around them.
Draft five values that capture the difference. Make each one specific enough to guide a real decision. Test them against recent situations: would this value have told someone what to do?
Share the draft with your leadership team. Ask them to challenge it: “Is this actually true? Would we still hold this if it cost us money?” Refine based on their pushback.
Then start using them. Don’t wait for a rollout. Reference them in your next team meeting. Use them in your next hire. Make them real through repetition, not ceremony.
Let’s Get Your Values Off the Wall and Into Your Operations
Articulating values that actually drive behavior is one of the highest-leverage things you can do as a leader. It changes hiring, accountability, and the daily decisions your team makes without you. If you’re ready to move from generic poster words to operational principles your people live by, let’s talk. A 30-minute call costs nothing and could be the clearest conversation you’ve had about your culture in years.
Once your values are defined, you’ll want a system to keep them visible—in your org chart, your meetings, and your accountability tools. That’s why we run on Ninety.io.
