Business values are statements that reflect the ethical principles of a company. These values are intended to guide the company’s future strategy, decision-making, and culture. However, in many cases, companies publish a generic or insincere set of values that have no real value to their organization. Effective values are bold and relevant to the decisions that the company regularly faces. They provide clear guidance for employees and help to align them in a common, ethical direction.
Good values are actionable and unique so as to become part of your identity. Terrible values are cliche, moot and unmemorable. For example, cliche one word phrases such as “integrity.”
Although business values are about ethics, they are often extended to values such as productivity and creativity that arguably have nothing to do with ethics.
The following are examples:
A safe, healthy and flexible work environment.
Always be helpful to the customer.
Always be launching and gaining real world feedback.
Approach people with compassion and patience.
Attention to detail and diligence.
Avoid the mediocrity of copying the competition by leading the way forward.
Be candid, open and honest.
Be completely transparent.
Be inclusive and seek diverse perspectives.
Be nice to people.
Be original enough to change the world.
Be patient with big ideas.
Build internal competitive advantages and know-how.
Build others to build yourself.
Challenge the status quo.
Charge into ambiguity, difficulty and challenge.
Chase passion and purpose over end-goals.
Communicate plainly, concisely and accurately.
Create the products that are the most fun to use.
Create without fear of criticism.
Creative tension — better debates bring better outcomes.
Defer mediocrity with a bias for risk taking and action.
Delight the customer.
Demonstrate compassion for people and stewardship for the planet.
Disagree and commit.
Diversity and inclusion are the source of creativity.
Do good for people and planet.
Do more with less.
Dream big.
Drive down cost, drive up quality.
Each customer is an individual.
Each one of us is immersed in the culture surrounding our products.
Eliminate biases and be fair.
Eliminate wasted effort and cost.
Embrace optimism, realism and pragmatism — what ever makes sense to the task at hand.
Embrace risk and manage it.
Enjoy it.
Entrepreneurial spirit — always be testing, launching and optimizing.
Every problem is a design problem.
Everyone deserves dignity and respect.
Fail often to win often.
Failure is an option, be quick to admit mistakes.
Fast beats slow.
Fearlessly tackle ambiguity to lead.
Focus on customers over competitors.
Fulfill your obligations.
Give and expect respect.
Give back to the community.
Help each other.
Ideas are tested and validated.
Ideas from anywhere and everywhere.
If we do it, we do it unbelievably well.
Improve constantly — today’s great is tomorrow’s mediocre.
It takes decades to build a reputation and minutes to ruin it.
It’s dangerous not to change.
Keep it real.
Last responsible moment — avoid overthinking and overplanning.
Learn by doing.
Learn from problems, challenges and failure.
Make life better for everyone.
Make the decision that is best for the customer.
Mediocrity, complacency and relentless defence of the status quo have no place here.
Never lose your sense of humor.
Never shirk accountability or responsibility.
Offer complete transparency to all stakeholders.
Our legal terms are direct, easy to understand and fair.
Our products are intuitive and fun to use.
Our products are natural, healthy and safe.
Outcompete with quality.
Own our value.
Pay it forward.
People and planet over profits.
Petty politics have no place here.
Play by the rules but be aggressive.
Play fair.
Produce value for the customer and all else will follow.
Protect nature.
Push through hard problems.
Reduce our environmental impact towards zero.
Remain respectful and civil in disagreement.
Resolve the root cause of problems.
Respect customers.
Respect local culture.
Scale refined products, avoid markets where we have little to offer.
Set ambitious standards that far exceed the competition.
Start with the customer.
Stay humble in success.
Steadfast in the face of challenges and problems.
Style and refinement matter.
Substance over hype.
Take calculated risks.
Take ownership.
Take the long view.
Think big, research the details.
Think global, act local.
To survive as a company, we must soon be doing what it presently impossible.
To win, you need to really want it.
Treat others as you would like to be treated (golden rule).
Trust & verify.
Trust one another.
Try things that might fail with lightweight experiments.
Unity in diversity.
We are all customer advocates.
We build durability and resilience into everything we do.
We meet commitments.
We solve hard problems.
We take care of our people.
Work from first principles.
Work hard.
