It's a comfortable arrangement. It allows an organisation to claim the virtue of the words without suffering the inconvenience of their meaning.
To print a value on a wall is the work of an afternoon. It’s safe, tidy. It satisfies the requirement of having a ‘culture’ without demanding the anguish of actually building one. You can point to the poster. You can recite the list. You can wrap yourself in the pleasant fiction that stating a principle is the same as holding it.
Most organisations stop there. And who can blame them? To go further is to invite trouble.
Because the moment you decide that these words are not merely decoration but legislation, you introduce a friction into your days that will not easily be soothed.
If you insist that your values are real, you deprive yourself of the luxury of the easy decision. You will find yourself staring at a profitable contract that you cannot sign. You will feel compelled to dismiss the high-performing employee who poisons the well. You will find yourself in the lonely position of explaining to a room full of pragmatists why the expedient path is closed to you.
There is a seduction in the static. You can frame your values, mount them on the wall, and admire them as you would a painting. Perfect. Unchanging. But ultimately, lifeless.
But you have the opportunity to build something that breathes.
The poster asks nothing of you. It hangs there, silent and approving, regardless of what you do.
But your customer? That is a taskmaster. They will nag at you when they know you have let a standard slip and force you to admit that you were wrong when it would be so much more comfortable to be silent.
Living your values is a strenuous business. It is a daily, unglamorous resistance against the drift toward convenience. It requires a mind that is constantly sceptical of its own justifications. It demands a vigilance that is sometimes exhausting.
But consider what you get in return.
Customers are tired of the polished surface. They are desperate for the real thing. When they find a business that actually lives its code, that apologises when it misses the mark, that holds its line when it would be profitable to fold, that treats its people with the same reverence it claims in its mission statement, you build true trust and loyalty with them.
I cannot promise you that this path will make you rich. The world is full of wealthy people who left their values in the frame.
But if you choose to carry the burden of your own standards, rather than just displaying them, you will have something the others do not. You will have a brand that is vibrant, human, and real. And in a world of empty frames, that is a rare and powerful thing.
