Company Values
Define the principles that guide decisions and culture.
The company values canvas turns foundation prose into observable behaviours, hiring signals, and anti-behaviours. It is operational ethics for daily decisions.
Abstract values posters do not guide trade-offs. Behavioural values improve hiring, reviews, and client selection.
After mission-vision-values draft; before scaling headcount or partner channels.
- Start from mission-vision-values draft.
- Write 4–6 values as verbs.
- Add "we do / we don't" examples each.
- Define hiring and promotion signals.
- Review in real decisions quarterly.
- Examples are specific stories.
- Anti-behaviours named.
- Used in hiring scorecards.
- Generic values no one disputes.
- No negative examples.
- HR-only document engineers ignore.
Northvale Systems "One source of truth" — we do reconcile vendor IDs before go-live; we don't launch plant-specific shadow lists. Used to block a shadow SharePoint registry.
Acme Analytics value "Show the receipts" — we do link metrics to source transactions; we don't ship charts without drill-down. Used to reject black-box AI feature.
Riverstone Legal "Prevention over billable hours" — we do ship templates; we don't escalate to litigation unnecessarily. Screened conflict-prone clients.
Clearwater Initiative "Community owns the data" — we do train committees to read charts; we don't export data without local consent. Screened a donor demanding proprietary datasets.
/strategy on company-values, IDs VAL-01. Complements mission-vision-values prose guide.
Related techniques
Sources & further reading
- Collins, J. C., & Porras, J. I. (1996). Built to Last. HarperBusiness.