A brand value you don't see reflected in behaviour doesn't exist

Picture this: a care organisation has "engagement" as a core value. On the wall, in the brand manual, in every job advert. Then a reorganisation comes along. The communication runs through HR letters and standard procedures, without any personal conversations. Afterwards, employees don't point to the reorganisation itself as the tipping point, but to the way it was carried out. That was the moment they stopped taking the values seriously.

This is not an exception. This is the pattern.

Core values only work when they cost something

A value that only holds when it's easy is a wish. Not a value.

That sounds simple, but practice shows something different. Research by MIT Sloan Management Review across hundreds of organisations (Sull, Turconi & Sull, 2020) demonstrates that there is no measurable correlation between published core values and how employees actually experience the culture. Most large companies have core values on their website. The connection with the lived culture? Barely any.

At the same time, a clear majority of CEOs and CFOs in North America acknowledge that a better culture improves financial performance, while that same group admits their own culture isn't healthy enough. They know it. They do little with it.

The easy explanation is bad faith or a lack of priority. But that's not quite right. The deeper cause is that most organisations have no mechanism that ties core values back to the moment things get tough. They are formulated for the good times, not the hard ones.

The exit conversation as the most honest mirror

How an organisation says goodbye to an employee is the most honest mirror of what it really believes.

Not the job advert. Not the onboarding. The departure. Because at that moment the stakes are highest, the emotions most intense and the temptation strongest to fall back on what's easy. An organisation that has "respect" as a core value shows it in the conversation no one wants to have. Or precisely doesn't.

The same applies to the difficult client, the internal conflict, the choice to turn down an assignment because it doesn't fit who you are. Those are the moments when core values have to become visible. If they disappear then, they were decoration.

This is also what the MIT research showed: the strongest predictor of how employees rate the culture is whether managers act in line with the core values. Not whether those values are published. Not whether there's a beautiful brand manual. Whether the behaviour of the people at the top matches what's on the wall.

Four criteria for a working core value

There is a workable test for whether a core value is real or merely desirable. Four criteria, which together determine whether a value carries weight.

Recognisable: employees recognise the value in the behaviour of colleagues, not only in their own intentions. If "engaged" is a core value and employees don't use the word to describe one another, something is off.

Central: the value recurs across all layers of the organisation. Not only in outward communication, but also in how a team leader gives feedback, or how a receptionist handles a phone call.

Enduring: the value has held for years and doesn't change with every new director or campaign. Core values that get adjusted with every rebrand aren't core values but buzzwords.

Powerful: the value can help tip a decision. That's the criterion that reveals the most. If someone in a tricky situation can say "we don't do this, because it doesn't fit who we are", and the rest of the organisation recognises that as a legitimate argument, then the value works.

A manufacturing company with "quality" as a core value discovered during a brand programme that operators translated "quality" as "making no mistakes", while the management meant "quality" as "customer experience". Two years of the same value on the wall, two completely different decisions on the shop floor.

Why values on paper survive so long

Most brand programmes end with a list of values and a brand manual. That's not the problem. The problem is what doesn't happen afterwards.

There is no feedback loop. No moment when the organisation asks itself the question: did we actually do this over the past month? Core values are rarely tested against the moment of truth, and that's exactly why they can exist for so long without ever coming to life.

Gallup's State of the Global Workplace (2024) shows that worldwide only 23% of employees say they are engaged at work, despite growing attention to purpose and core values in organisations. The figure barely changes from year to year. More values communication doesn't solve that.

What's missing is the mechanism. The translation of an abstract value into a concrete question someone can ask at the moment things get tough. Not "are we engaged?" but "did I have a conversation this week that I could easily have avoided, and did I have it anyway?"

From poster to decision rule

Core values become usable once they're translated into behavioural questions that everyone in the organisation can ask. That requires a step most programmes skip: the elaboration per role.

"Engaged" means something different for a receptionist than for a director. For the receptionist it might be: remember a regular client's name and ask how they're doing. For the director: pick up the phone yourself when a complaint comes in that you could easily pass on. Two completely different behaviours, the same value.

Organisations that create at least three role-specific elaborations per core value notice that the values become more visible in hiring decisions, client conversations and internal conflicts. Not because the values have changed, but because they've become concrete enough to use.

That's also why core-values work doesn't stop at the brand manual. A brand manual records what the values are. The elaboration per role makes them usable. And the mechanism that ties them back to daily practice keeps them alive.

The test you can run next week

There is a simple way to measure whether core values have penetrated the decision-making layer of an organisation.

Ask five employees at different levels when a core value helped them with a difficult choice over the past month. Not whether they know the values, but when they used them. The answer tells you more than a brand audit.

If no one can name a concrete moment, the values aren't yet working. They are known, but not usable. The work then doesn't begin with the communication, but with the translation: what does this value mean for you, in your role, at the moment things get tough?

That's the difference between a value that hangs on a wall and a value that steers an organisation. Not the wording. Not the poster. But whether someone can name it when you ask when they used it.

At Schwung, we see this distinction in brand programmes: organisations that write out core values per role build a foundation that stands even after launch. Not because the work is then done, but because the work then truly begins.

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Further reading

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