Every company has core values. Most just haven’t written down the real ones.
The values on the wall might say “excellence, integrity, innovation.” The real values show up in who gets promoted, who gets tolerated and what the owner does when nobody’s watching. If those two lists don’t match, the team knows — and they follow the real one.
Discover them, don’t invent them
The biggest mistake owners make is picking values they wish they had. Values aren’t aspirations. They’re descriptions of how your best people already behave.
Here’s the exercise I use with leadership teams:
- Name three people you’d clone. If you could have ten more just like them, the business would thrive. Write down what makes them great — not their skills, their behavior.
- Name people who didn’t fit. Past or present. What behaviors caused the friction?
- List the behaviors. You’ll have a page of them: “owns mistakes,” “follows through,” “helps without being asked,” “tells the truth even when it’s awkward.”
- Group them into themes. Most lists collapse into three to six clusters.
- Name each theme in your own words. Plain language beats corporate language. “Do what you said” is better than “accountability.”
- Write a short description of what each value looks like in action.
Keep three to five
More than five and nobody remembers them. Fewer than three usually misses something important. Test each value: would you hire or fire someone over it? If not, it’s a preference, not a core value.
Core values examples
These are examples of the shape, not a list to copy:
- Do it right. We don’t cut corners, even when nobody would notice.
- Own it. When something goes wrong, we say “my fault” and fix it.
- Tell the truth. We say the hard thing kindly and early.
- Serve first. We help the customer and each other before we’re asked.
- Get better. We learn something every week and share it.
Notice they’re short, specific and behavioral. Each one describes something you can see.
How to use core values
Values only matter if they show up in decisions.
Hiring
Ask interview questions that reveal each value: “Tell me about a time you made a mistake that cost a customer. What did you do?” Look for patterns, not polished answers. See hiring the right people.
Reviews
Rate people against each value — clearly living it, sometimes living it, not living it. Combined with whether they’re great in their seat, it gives a fair, simple picture. See accountability in the workplace.
Recognition
Call out specific examples in team meetings: “When Maria called that customer back on a Saturday, that was ‘serve first.’” Stories teach values better than posters.
Hard calls
When a high performer doesn’t share the values, the values have to win — or they stop being values. These are the hardest decisions owners make, and the most important.
Values in the one-page plan
Core values are the first section of the Blueprint in the BOSS framework, alongside purpose, focus and the long-range target. They don’t change often — maybe never — while the rest of the plan evolves. See strategic planning for small business.
Faith, family and values
I’m a faith-anchored, family-first entrepreneur, and that shapes how I lead. Your values don’t need to mirror mine. But they should be honest about what you believe. When the owner’s real convictions show up in the values, the culture has a backbone. When they don’t, it’s just a list.
Common mistakes
- Choosing aspirational words. Values describe who you are, not who you hope to be.
- Too many values. Nobody remembers seven.
- Generic words without descriptions. “Integrity” means something different to everyone.
- Never using them. If values don’t appear in hiring and reviews, they’re decoration.
- Exempting top performers. That’s how a culture quietly dies.
Rolling them out
Share the values in a team meeting with stories behind each one. Ask the team: “Does this sound like us at our best?” Refine the wording if needed. Then start using them: in the next interview, the next review and the next recognition moment. Within a few months, people will start using the language themselves — that’s when you know they’ve taken root.
Revisiting them
Once a year, at annual planning, ask whether the values still describe your best people. Usually they do. Occasionally a value needs sharper wording, or a new one emerges as the business matures. Change them rarely, and only with the leadership team’s agreement.
Next steps
Run the clone exercise with your leadership team this month. Pair your values with a clear vision statement and put both on your one-page plan. If you’d like help facilitating the conversation, request a strategy call.
Questions people ask
How many core values should a company have?
Three to five. Fewer than three rarely captures the culture; more than five and nobody remembers them. Each should be specific enough to guide a real decision.
How do you define company core values?
Look at the people you’d clone and the people who didn’t fit, list the behaviors that separate them, group those behaviors into a few themes, and write each value in plain language with a short description of what it looks like in action.
How do you use core values in a small business?
Hire for them, review people against them, recognize them publicly, and use them to make tough people decisions. Values that only live on the wall have no effect.