Culture Club #10: Values – Your Invisible Business Compass

Today we’re talking about aligning your personal values and motivations to your business.

But first, Things That Matter

• UK pension funds urged to back homegrown tech “thoroughbreds,” potentially unlocking £200bn for scale-ups - Read more 👉The Times

• Northern VC shake-up: PXN Group launches with £670m to build a new “golden triangle” across Manchester, Leeds, and Edinburgh - Read more 👉FemaleSwitch

• Chinese markets surge on AI optimism, with Alibaba up nearly 19% and the CSI-300 gaining 10% - Read more 👉Reuters

• Leeds Digital festival is celebrating 10 years with over 200 free events on all things tech. Check out the programme here.

You don’t need a whiteboard session to discover your values.

They’ve been with you since long before you registered the domain or filed your first invoice.

They’re in the job you swore you’d never do again.

They’re in the boss who taught you more by being terrible.

They’re in the quiet decision to prioritise school pickups or walk away from a lucrative deal that didn’t feel right.

But in the rush to build - product, pitch, pipeline - those deeper motivations often get pushed aside.

And when we work with founders, what we see time and again is that values still show up. Whether you’ve named them or not.

They’re lurking in the language you use.

They echo in how you interview.

They’re painfully absent when a team member’s grating on you but you can’t quite put your finger on why.

One founder we worked with last week had deep expertise and early traction. But the challenge wasn’t technical. It was the strange new weight of leading a team, not just pushing a product without an established team around for support.

Just a few good people, a big idea, and silence where the culture should be.

What unlocked it?

We went back to his values and motivations.

His drive was simple: build something that had never been done before.

Not for vanity. For meaning and impact.

When we helped him frame that value clearly, it became more than a private ambition. It turned into a beacon.

The kind that pulls in the right hires, and politely repels the wrong ones.

It also gave his team something to hold onto.

A shared understanding that this wasn’t a place to sit still.

Push the envelope. Don’t rest on your laurels. Try new things.

Come back with ideas and challenge what’s already there.

And, crucially, he was happy to be proved wrong.

That alone, paired with the ambition to break new ground, is rocket fuel for a fast-moving culture.

It’s easy to think of values as the icing. But they’re often the yeast.

Without them, things fall flat.

With them, you create businesses that rise.

So, whether you’re just starting out or already well into your journey, ask yourself this:

It’s not about sticking words on a wall.

It’s about using values as tools: for hiring, decision-making, culture-setting.

Because if you don’t make them visible, they’ll still show up.

Just not always in the way you’d hope.

While you don’t need the whiteboard treatment, sometimes it helps! Want Trove to help crack your motivations and values in business? Or know someone who might?

Drop us a line or book a call with us.

See you same time next week.

Carl.