Culture Club #6 – Values You Can See

Today we’re talking about values and how you can harness them to shape your business culture.

But first, today’s highlights:

🎥 Our next Podcast episode is live! Chris and Carl dive into how to codify your culture and harness it as your super-power.

🗞️ South Yorkshire has a burgeoning tech scene, Tech SY’s Matt Snowdon has written a great article about it - check it out here

You already have values.

You already have values. Even if you’ve never written them down or workshopped them over croissants, they’re there. Lurking behind every tough decision you’ve made.

What did you lean on the last time you had to say no to something tempting but off-track? Or choose a difficult path over an easier shortcut? That quiet inner compass is your values at work.

Values are your compass

In startups, scale-ups, in fact any business, values are the compass you reach for when things get messy.

They don’t sit in your brand book. They show up in how you hire, how you make decisions, how you deal with conflict, and how you treat your team when the pressure is on. The tone should be set by the founders.

That doesn’t mean holding court and announcing a manifesto. It means showing up in a way that reflects what matters. Who gets rewarded. What gets tolerated. When you step in. When you step back. Whether you collect your kids from school without apology. Whether you listen to the staff survey and act on it, or ignore it and hope it goes away.

Because people are watching. They are working out whether what you say and what you do are aligned.

Don’t leave them in the kitchen.

You don’t need to be perfect. Just consistent.

Put values into the day-to-day. Use them when giving feedback. Let them guide decisions. Apply them when things go well, and when things go badly.

When values are lived rather than stated, people know where they stand. They understand what matters. They can act without needing to ask.

That is leadership. And that is culture you can feel.

Curious how your culture stacks up?

We’ve just launched the CORE OS™ Scorecard — a practical tool to help founders and leaders get a quick read on their company culture.

It takes less than five minutes and gives you a snapshot of how well you’re doing across the four pillars of a strong cultural operating system: Clarity, Operating Principles, Rhythm, and Evidence.

You’ll get instant results and a few pointers on what to work on next.

No waffle. No vague HR-speak. Just a straight answer to: is your culture helping you scale, or holding you back?

Take the scorecard below to see how your culture stacks up 👇

See you same time next week.

Carl.