Core Values often get a bad rap.
For most people, they are just another organizational cliché—words written at a retreat, heard once during a job interview, and then stuck on a wall near the water cooler to gather dust.
But when used correctly, they are more important than people realize. Core Values are your cultural guardrails. They are the only thing that keeps your culture on the road as you grow, scale, and evolve.
Here is the secret: You don’t need to “create” your Core Values. They already exist. The trick is to uncover them and articulate them so they truly reflect the culture you actually have, not the one you wish you had.
The Marketing Trap
I recently worked with a client who had a finely manicured set of Core Values. They were plastered everywhere—the lobby, the website, the brochures. When I suggested we revisit them, I got pushback. They had spent a lot of money on those words!
But there was a problem: Those values were for marketing. They articulated how they wanted customers to see them, not how they expected their staff to behave.
There is a massive difference. Marketing is for the outside; Core Values are for the inside.
Non-Negotiable Behaviors
Your Core Values should reflect non-negotiable behaviors. They are the tool you use to hire, fire, review, reward, and recognize your team. They build trust and alignment by attracting the right people and repelling the ones who just don’t fit.
This means they need to be specific to you.
“Integrity” isn’t a Core Value; it’s an expectation. It’s table stakes. If an employee doesn’t have integrity, you don’t coach them—you fire them.
Don’t settle for generic words. Get granular. Get specific. Make your Core Values sound like your culture, so you can stop putting words on the wall and start building a team that actually lives by them.
The power of EOS is that it connects the dots. It takes you all the way from high-level Vision and Values down to the practical tools for solving your day-to-day issues. If you want to see how that framework would look in your business, send me a note or give me a call. I’d love to walk you through it.