How to Define Company Values That Actually Mean Something

Most companies have values. Almost none of them matter. Go to any company's website and you will find a list: integrity, innovation, teamwork, excellence, customer focus. These words are so common that they have become meaningless. When every company claims the same values, no company is actually defined by them. If you want to define company values that actually influence behavior, drive hiring decisions, and shape your culture in measurable ways, you need to throw out the platitudes and start from what is real.

This is the first post in our Company Culture series, which explores how culture becomes a practical hiring tool. If you have read our post on how company DNA transforms hiring decisions, you already know the framework for encoding values into hiring. This post goes deeper into the foundational step most companies skip: defining values that are specific enough to evaluate, honest enough to believe, and distinctive enough to differentiate your organization from every other company claiming to value “integrity.”

Why Most Company Values Are Useless

The problem with most values statements is not that they are wrong. Integrity is good. Innovation is good. Teamwork is good. The problem is that they are not values — they are table stakes. Saying your company values integrity is like saying your restaurant values food safety. It is the minimum expectation, not a differentiator.

A real company value has three properties:

1. It is specific enough to be observable. You can watch someone work for a week and determine whether they embody this value. “Integrity” is not observable without further definition. “We tell clients the truth even when it costs us the deal” is observable.
2. It is distinctive enough to be a real choice. A genuine value means you are choosing to prioritize one thing over another. “We value speed over perfection” is a real value because it implies you are willing to sacrifice polish for momentum. “We value excellence” is not a choice because no one would claim to value mediocrity.
3. It has a cost. If a value never requires you to sacrifice something, it is not a real value — it is a preference. Real values are tested when they conflict with short-term interests. “We promote transparency” is tested when transparency means sharing bad news with investors. “We prioritize employee development” is tested when development means investing in someone who might leave for a better opportunity.

A useful company value is one that would cause a reasonable person to disagree with you. If no reasonable person would oppose your value, it is a platitude, not a principle.

How to Extract Real Values From How Your Company Actually Operates

The values that matter are not the ones on the poster. They are the ones that explain why certain people thrive at your company and why others fail. They are the unwritten rules that your best employees already follow and your worst hires consistently violated. Here is how to find them.

Exercise 1: The Best Performers / Worst Departures Analysis

This is the single most effective exercise for uncovering real values. It takes about 45 minutes and produces more useful insight than any workshop or consultant exercise.

1. List your five best performers. Not the highest paid or most tenured — the people who embody what your company is at its best. The people you would clone if you could.
2. For each person, answer: What makes them great here? Not their skills — their behaviors. How do they approach problems? How do they treat coworkers? What do they do when things go wrong? What do they do that other employees do not?
3. List your five most painful departures — people who were hired with high expectations and either left voluntarily in frustration or were eventually let go.
4. For each person, answer: What went wrong? Not skill gaps — behavioral mismatches. What did they do that created friction? What norms did they violate? What expectations did they fail to meet that were never explicitly stated?
5. Compare the two lists. The behaviors that appear consistently in your best performers and are consistently absent in your worst departures — those are your real values.

Here is what this exercise typically reveals. A construction company did this exercise and found that their top performers all shared three traits: they communicated problems early instead of hiding them, they took ownership of outcomes beyond their specific scope, and they adapted to changing conditions without complaints. Their worst departures all shared the opposite: they buried problems until they were emergencies, they stayed narrowly within their job descriptions, and they resisted changes to plans or processes. The company's official values were “safety, quality, integrity.” Their real values were early transparency, expanded ownership, and adaptability.

Exercise 2: The Hard Decision Audit

Real values reveal themselves in hard decisions. Look at the last ten significant decisions your leadership team made — strategic pivots, personnel changes, client relationships, spending priorities. For each decision, ask: what principle drove this choice?

• If you fired a profitable client because they were abusive to your staff, your real value is employee well-being over revenue.
• If you delayed a product launch to fix quality issues despite pressure from investors, your real value is quality over speed.
• If you promoted the quiet high-performer over the charismatic networker, your real value is results over visibility.
• If you gave a struggling employee three months of coaching before letting them go, your real value is development before termination.

The decisions themselves reveal the hierarchy of your values — what you prioritize when two good things are in tension. That hierarchy is your actual culture, regardless of what the website says.

Exercise 3: The New Employee Observation

Ask three employees who have been with the company for six to twelve months: “What surprised you about how things actually work here? What did you have to learn that nobody told you during the hiring process?”

The answers reveal the implicit norms that operate beneath the official values. “I was surprised how much autonomy I had from day one” tells you something different from “I was surprised how many approvals I needed to get anything done.” Both are valuable data points about what the company actually values.

How to Write Values That Are Evaluatable in Interviews

Once you have identified your real values, the next step is defining them in behavioral terms that can be assessed during the hiring process. Here is a formula that works:

Value Name + Behavioral Definition + Observable Indicators + Anti-Patterns

Here are three examples of fully defined, evaluatable values:

Example 1: Radical Ownership

• Definition: We take responsibility for outcomes beyond our role description. When something goes wrong, we own the problem before blaming the circumstances.
• Observable indicators: Volunteering for problems that are not explicitly theirs. Using “I” language when describing failures and “we” language when describing successes. Proactively identifying issues before they are assigned.
• Anti-patterns: “That's not my job.” Blaming other departments, vendors, or circumstances. Waiting to be told about problems that are visible.
• Interview question: “Tell me about a time when something went wrong at work that was not entirely your fault. What did you do?” Listen for ownership vs. deflection.

Example 2: Constructive Candor

• Definition: We say what we think directly, respectfully, and in the room rather than in the hallway afterward. We believe that honest disagreement produces better outcomes than polite consensus.
• Observable indicators: Raising concerns in meetings rather than after them. Giving specific, actionable feedback to peers. Disagreeing with leaders when they have a substantive concern.
• Anti-patterns: Smiling in the meeting and complaining in the parking lot. Giving vague feedback that avoids the real issue. Agreeing with the boss to avoid discomfort.
• Interview question: “Tell me about a time you disagreed with your manager on an important decision. How did you handle it?” Listen for direct engagement vs. passive compliance.

Example 3: Speed With Guardrails

• Definition: We move fast and ship frequently. We prefer imperfect action over perfect planning. But we distinguish between reversible decisions (move fast) and irreversible decisions (move carefully).
• Observable indicators: Making progress daily rather than weekly. Proposing solutions alongside problems. Asking “Is this reversible?” before deciding how much analysis is needed.
• Anti-patterns: Analysis paralysis. Requesting more data as a delay tactic. Treating every decision as if it is permanent.
• Interview question: “Describe a time when you had to make a decision with incomplete information. How did you decide when you had enough to act?” Listen for comfort with ambiguity and a bias toward action.

How Many Values Should You Have?

The right number is three to five. Fewer than three, and you are probably not capturing the full picture. More than five, and nobody will remember them — which means they will not influence behavior, which means they are decoration.

A good test: can every employee in the company recite the values from memory? If not, you have too many. The most effective values systems we have seen have three core values that everyone can recite, with behavioral definitions that are referenced in hiring, performance reviews, and promotion decisions.

Values That Are Worth Having Will Make Some People Uncomfortable

If your values make everyone comfortable, they are not values — they are feel-good statements. Real values exclude. They tell certain people, “This company is not for you.” And that is exactly the point.

“We value speed over perfection” will repel meticulous perfectionists. Good. They would be miserable at your company. “We value direct feedback, even when it is uncomfortable” will repel people who avoid confrontation. Good. They would not survive your meeting culture.

The purpose of values in hiring is not to attract everyone. It is to attract the right people and allow the wrong people to self-select out before either side invests significant time. Values that do not filter anyone are not doing their job.

How to Use Values in the Hiring Process

Defining values is worthless unless they change how you hire. Here is how to operationalize them:

In Job Descriptions

Include your values and their behavioral definitions in every job posting. Not as boilerplate at the bottom, but as a featured section that communicates who you are and who will thrive here. A candidate who reads your values and thinks “that sounds like me” is more likely to be a good fit. A candidate who reads them and thinks “that sounds exhausting” just saved both of you months of misery.

In Interview Scorecards

Add each value as a scored dimension on your interview scorecard. Train interviewers to ask the behavioral questions defined for each value and to score candidates on a consistent scale. This prevents values evaluation from being a vague afterthought discussed over coffee after the formal interview.

In Candidate Communication

Share your values with candidates before the interview. Give them the behavioral definitions, not just the labels. A candidate who knows you value “constructive candor” and still interviews with polished, conflict-avoiding answers is telling you something important about their natural style.

In Offer Decisions

When two candidates are close on skills and experience, values alignment should be the tiebreaker — or, in many cases, the primary differentiator. A candidate who is slightly less experienced but strongly aligned with your values will almost always outperform a more experienced candidate who is misaligned. Skills can be taught. Values alignment either exists or it does not.

Common Pitfalls in Defining Company Values

Aspiration vs. Reality

The most common mistake is defining values based on who you want to be rather than who you are. If your company does not actually practice radical transparency, do not claim it as a value. Define values based on what your best people already do, not what you wish your average people did. You can add aspirational values later, once the foundational values are documented and operational. Trying to change the culture and define the culture simultaneously produces a values statement that nobody trusts.

Values by Committee

When values are defined by a committee or an all-hands vote, they converge on the lowest-common-denominator statements that nobody objects to — which means statements that nobody is inspired by either. Values should be defined by the people who most embody the culture: founders, senior leaders, and top performers. They should then be validated by the broader team, but not authored by committee.

Too Many Values

Some companies emerge from a values exercise with eight or ten values. This is a sign that the exercise did not include enough prioritization. The question is not “what do we value?” — you value dozens of things. The question is “what do we value so much that we will sacrifice other good things to protect it?” That question forces prioritization.

Static Values

Values should evolve as the company evolves. A startup that values “move fast and break things” may need to shift toward “move fast with guardrails” as it scales. A company that values “tight-knit family culture” may need to evolve toward “professional trust” as it grows past 50 employees. Review your values annually and ask: do these still describe how we operate at our best?

Getting Started This Week

If your company values are currently generic or absent, here is a concrete plan for the next five days:

1. Day 1: Do the Best Performers / Worst Departures exercise with your leadership team. Write down the behavioral patterns for each group.
2. Day 2: Do the Hard Decision Audit. Review ten significant decisions and identify the principles that drove them.
3. Day 3: Synthesize the results. Identify the three to five behavioral patterns that appear most consistently. Draft a name, behavioral definition, observable indicators, and anti-patterns for each one.
4. Day 4: Validate with two or three of your best performers. Show them the draft values and ask: “Does this describe what it actually takes to succeed here?” Revise based on their feedback.
5. Day 5: Write the interview questions for each value. Add them to your interview scorecard. Your values are now operational.

For organizations that want to take this further, PersonaScore's Company DNA feature lets you encode your values directly into the hiring platform, automatically generating role-specific interview criteria and candidate evaluations aligned with your defined values. Combined with personality assessments that measure behavioral tendencies relevant to your values, it creates a closed loop between what your company stands for and who you hire.

Next in our Company Culture series: using EOS and company operating systems to hire better. If your company runs on EOS, Scaling Up, or a similar framework, you already have structured values and accountability tools. That post shows you how to translate them directly into hiring criteria.