Your company values will be used against you

What founders get wrong about company culture — and how not to make the same mistake

Did you know fintech startup Ramp has a core values generator on their site? It’s weird, and not least because it has nothing to do with their company.

“Generate inspiring core values in seconds,” the site promises, followed by the suggestion that you will “discover your company’s ethos and explore your guiding principles” by using the tool. All you need is your company’s name and three adjectives that describe it.

Ignoring the fact that the example adjectives it provides (“Ownership, growth, etc”) aren’t even adjectives, we decided to see what the generator would make of Valley Letter. Providing it with the (actual) adjectives innovative, informative and fun, we received this:

While these values obviously lacked a certain personal touch, they weren’t dissimilar to the kind of ‘fluffy’, unsubstantial company values that are paraded about by big tech companies all the time. Think Facebook’s “move fast and break things” mantra or Google’s 10 things.

Companies use these values to attract new hires and project a certain image to the public. But they also shape company culture and can even be cited in firings.

So how did core values become so trivial and yet so important? And is there a better way to talk about company values and culture?

Most people will automatically look at a company’s core values with a healthy amount of skepticism. We all know profit comes first — it wouldn’t be much of a company if it didn’t.

But we still turn to these values to signpost the kind of environment we can expect at a company, either when applying for a job or deciding whether or not to do business with them.

When Lego says it values creativity, that’s a reflection of the industry, not the workplace. When Pfizer says its core value is “fun”, that’s meant to tell us something about their culture — but it feels like such a strange priority for a drug developer that it’s meaningless.

But if they’re so meaningless, what’s the harm?

In startups, these values are fun, informal ways that companies set themselves apart. Stripe has exothermic. EY has teaming. Asana has heartitude — whatever that means.

But as a company grows, its values can quickly become weaponized.

There are whole guides on firing people over core value violations. And conflicts can arise from different interpretations of the same value.

A set of values designed to give direction to a company can instead have the exact opposite effect.

So what’s the alternative?
If companies really want to communicate how they work, they should share precedents, not values. They’re far less subjective, and show what really happens to an ideal when it’s put under pressure.

Precedents can include things like:

• In a period of recession, we…
• When given the choice between cutting benefits or conducting layoffs, we…
• We cultivate a fun environment by hosting weekly…
• During disagreements, our behavior is expected to be…

Companies don’t even have to get rid of their catchy slogans. Here are three of Asana’s core values, extended to present a clear and transparent explanation of what the value looks like in practice:

Would exchanging values for precedents singlehandedly perfect company culture? Of course not — but it would make for a less exploitable system, and more honest communication on how a company is expected to operate.

And at the very least, it would get rid of all those made-up words.