Core values are the equivalent of the rules of a sport: It would not be a sport if there were no rules. Atlassian has had the same five core values since Scott Farquhar discovered them three years after co-founding the company in 2002—among them “Don’t #@!% the customer.” Those values have remained the same two decades later, as the company has scaled to more than 12,000 employees and remained consistent in offices with different cultures, as Atlassian has established a footprint in 13 countries. Core values are the equivalent of the rules of a sport: It would not be a sport if there were no rules. The rules are the same across countries and teams with often radically different cultures, but can be quite subjective, requiring every sport to have its version of a referee whose job is to decide if a player deserves a warning, a penalty, or to be thrown out of the game. If you’re not passing out yellow and red cards, as in soccer, no one is going to take your game seriously. Spur Important Conversations Core values guide decisions and spur conversations around decisions people in your organization have made. If a front-line team member has chosen a course of action that runs counter to what the leader of your company thinks is right, it can pave the way for a teachable moment—a mature conversation where the leader can say, “These are our five values/rules. What within these rules made you make that decision?” Often, core values feed a kind of creative tension. The employee may have a thoughtful response: “I was acting based on my understanding of this value.” The value is the focus of the conversation, not the person, a chance to learn and make better decisions in the future. However, if a team member is continually violating the rules, it may be time to free up their future. Stronger Brand and Easier Leading The three keys to fostering a strong foundation—whether it’s raising children with good morals or shaping a company’s decisions—are to establish a handful of rules, repeat them, and act in ways that are consistent with them. It’s this consistency of action and decision-making by all team members, aligned with a set of rules, which is the essence of a strong brand. Equally important, a culture driven by a handful of core values makes leading people much easier, reduces the need for stacks of policies and procedures, gives everyone a framework from which to make tough decisions, and generally brings simplicity and clarity to many of the “people” systems within a firm. So, how do you discover your core values if they’ve not yet been delineated–and bring them to life? Here are some ideas to get you started, so you can use your core values to replace the random lists you’re using for organizing employee orientation, recruiting, interviewing, and performance management. Discovering Your Values—Mission to Mars If you haven’t articulated your core values, starting from scratch can be frustrating. Jim Collins, the author of Good to Great, suggests a thought experiment he calls "Mission to Mars," which offers a quick, engaging method for discovering the right core values for your organization. Gather a representative group of employees or leaders from across the company, ask them to pick five employees who represent what’s best about your firm to send on a hypothetical mission to Mars for observation by Martian anthropologists. These individuals should embody the organization’s best qualities through their actions. Determine the top three vote-getters and initiate a conversation about them: Who are they? How do they go about their work? Why are they important or valuable to the organization? This will generate a list of phrases (avoid single words) that begin to show a pattern. This is the start of your list of core values. To validate, ask this group of leaders, “Who have we hired and then found they weren’t a good fit?” and brainstorm what went wrong. Often, it's because their actions and decisions weren’t aligned with those of your “Mars Mission” team. Collins emphasizes that there are no universally "right" core values—what matters is having values that genuinely reflect what’s great about your company. At my firm, Scaling Up, we discovered five core values: Create Ecstatic Clients Honor Intellectual Creatives Everyone an Entrepreneur Practice What We Preach Relentless Transparency Like Atlassian’s five core values, they are phrases (not single words) unique to our firm that have a distinct meaning inside our organization. I encourage all firms to read Atlassian’s core values (linked above). You’ll notice four important details. First, each of the five is a phrase with language unique to their organization, and not turned into corporate speak just because they are now a massive public company, 25 years after discovery. Second, there is a paragraph describing each, along with a video where employees throughout the organization describe what they mean to them and how they guide actions and help them make decisions. Third, each has a visual symbol that can show up in documents or on t-shirts worn by employees. Lastly, this page on their site is part of their recruiting process. Note the message in the lower right-hand corner of the page suggesting that if these values resonate with you, then this might be a company you would enjoy joining. Techniques for Bringing Your Core Values Alive Once you have your values, the other 99 percent of the effort goes into keeping these values alive with existing employees and inculcating (bringing into the culture) new employees and acquisitions as they join the firm. To keep things fresh, you have to find lots of different ways to repeat the same information—over and over—so that it doesn’t get stale, yet is reinforced daily. Storytelling Everybody enjoys a good story, and most great leaders teach through parables or storytelling. Above all, the story explains any core values that might seem unusual or cryptic on their own. The more that employees can attach core values to incidents in their working lives, the more relevant and useful they become. To get storytelling into your routine, start by making it a practice at your monthly or quarterly all-employee meetings by sharing a story from the past month or quarter that represents each core value. Orientation Once you’ve hired team members or acquired a firm, it’s time to inculcate them with your core values. Courtney Dickinson, formerly Sapient’s Culture Architect, established a week-long Boot Camp, a primary goal of which was to assist computer-trained techies to function in a customer-supportive environment. She used Sapient’s core values to organize experiential learning, and she found it uncommonly powerful. Performance Appraisal Just as core values should be the outline for your selection and orientation process, they should also be the skeleton on which you build your performance-appraisal system. With a little creativity, any performance measure can be linked to a core value. In addition, organize your employee handbook into sections around each core value. Recognition and Reward When you’re looking for recognition and reward categories, look no further than your core values. Using them publicly—at quarterly or annual meetings or on a good-news bulletin board—reinforces the primacy of these core values within your organization. You also gain a new source of corporate stories and legends each time you give a reward or recognition that highlights a core value. Core values naturally inspire quarterly or annual themes, keeping corporate improvement efforts in focus. Milliken, a textile manufacturer, selects one of its six core values each quarter, encouraging employees to improve the company around that theme. The Ritz-Carlton takes a daily approach, spotlighting one rule worldwide. This rhythm ensures core values stay visible through repetition. You might also have employees audit the firm’s alignment with a core value, sparking valuable discussions that keep values from becoming mere wall decor. Everyday Management Leaders and CEOs can repeat core values endlessly without it seeming ridiculous, so long as the core values are relevant and meaningful to their employees. When you make a decision, relate it to a core value. When you reprimand or praise, refer to a core value. When customer issues arise, by all means, compare the situation to the ideal represented by the core values. The same goes for employee beefs and concerns—weigh them against your company’s core values. Small as these actions may sound, they probably do more than any of the aforementioned strategies for bringing core values alive in your organization. Have a Few Rules, Repeat Yourself, and Be Consistent To guide team members to make better decisions aligned with what’s best for them and your clients, it’s key to discover a set of core values that define the unique rules of your organization and then play by them. Time and again, for the over 100,000 firms my firm has helped, we’ve found that core values make it easier to scale with less drama. Follow me on LinkedIn. Check out my website or some of my other work. Editorial StandardsForbes Accolades