They’re framed in Helvetica, backed by leadership visioning days, and occasionally resurrected during HR all-hands with the same enthusiasm as the lukewarm buffet.
You all know them well. Motivational nouns such as: Integrity. Collaboration. Respect. Excellence. Innovation. In other words: “We are not monsters. Please clap.”
But for all their aspirational sheen, values are increasingly becoming the beige throw pillows of organisational life. Nice to look at, occasionally comforting, completely useless in a fire.
Because what matters isn’t what you say during the away day. It’s what your team sees on the worst day. Far too many organisations have values that look great in the CEO’s keynote, but utterly vanish in the meeting where the junior associate is interrupted for the third time, and no one says a thing. Or when an employee underperforms after a bereavement and quietly disappears from the promotion list. Or when the high-performing bully is allowed to emotionally disrupt their team (again) because “they bring in results.”
That’s when values are tested, and far too often, they disappear.
Take trust. Many companies proudly declare it, often in bold font on pastel posters. And yet, inside the same organisations, we find email chains CC’d to seventeen people “for transparency,” paranoid approvals processes that require four managers and a blood sample, and Slack messages answered in panic because someone didn’t respond within the hour. This isn’t trust. This is surveillance.
Then there’s respect. The kind that apparently extends to everyone equally, but seems to disappear the moment someone with less status speaks up. We see it in the eye contact that skips over junior staff, the meetings where neurodivergent colleagues are asked if they’ve tried time-blocking, and the subtle sidelining of anyone whose communication style doesn’t mirror the extroverted norm. Respect, when it’s real, isn’t being polite to the people you already admire. It’s how you treat someone when they’re difficult, when they dissent, when they fail.
Let’s not forget excellence. A noble pursuit, until it’s reduced to vague slogans and weaponised KPIs. In some organisations, “high performance” is just code for, we ignore your wellbeing until your nervous system files a grievance. Excellence isn’t 14-hour days, it’s coherence and clarity. It’s alignment between vision and execution, that every team member can clearly see and emulate.
So why do companies still put so much energy into these slogans?
Because values, when done well, can be a compass. When done lazily, they become corporate astrology: flattering, vague, and always retrograde when you actually need them to mean something.
The uncomfortable truth is this, most organisations don’t live their values. They market them; culture becomes content and values become brand assets. The posters in the kitchen get more attention than the actual psychological safety of the people eating in it.
Living your values means they cost you something. It means promoting the quiet, emotionally literate woman who holds the team together, despite being overlooked by louder voices. It means calling out the senior leader who performs superficial empathy, but leads through fear. It means having the courage to acknowledge when “innovation” becomes chaos, or when “resilience” becomes unsustainable over-functioning.
Real values aren’t comfortable and they’re not meant to be.
They should create tension, make you pause before you hit send, or dismiss that idea, or let that behaviour slide. They should mean something when it’s inconvenient, not just when it’s aspirational.
So before your next rebrand or culture initiative, take a moment. Don’t look at the poster. Don’t dig out the email. Look at the behaviour:
- Can someone admit failure without fearing punishment?
- Can someone question leadership without being labelled “difficult”?
- Can someone say “I’m not okay” and still be seen as capable?
Because if not, those aren’t values. They’re slogans with commitment issues. And when they break, your culture breaks with them.
