Beyond Buzzwords: The Hidden Power of Real Core Values

Nice Words, No Substance

You’ve seen it on websites, painted on office walls, printed in team handbooks: a tidy list of values that say all the right things—until you realise they could belong to any business, anywhere.

"We believe in honesty, respect, collaboration..."

Sure. Who doesn’t? But if everyone says it, how does it help us tell you apart?

That’s the trap. Businesses spend time polishing values that sound good instead of getting real about the ones that actually guide how they build, hire, lead, and say no.

“If your values could be copied and pasted into any other business and not jar, they’re not your core values.”

This post is about making the distinction that changes everything.

Not All Values Are Equal (And That’s the Point)

Patrick Lencioni, in The Advantage, offers a refreshingly clear way to cut through the noise. He outlines four types of values that often get bundled together, but serve very different roles:

• Permission-to-Play Values: The behavioural minimum. Traits like honesty, respect, or fairness. These are essential for participation but don’t make you stand out.
• Core Values: Deeply held beliefs that shape decisions, culture, and identity. These are the values you’d stand by even if they came at a cost.
• Aspirational Values: Traits you wish you demonstrated more consistently. They point to where you want to grow.
• Accidental Values: Traits that have emerged unintentionally—sometimes helpful, sometimes inherited baggage.

If you don’t appreciate the difference, you’ll usually end up with something generic and bland that tells no one anything.

When a business mixes up permission-to-play values with core values, two things tend to happen:

• The culture gets blurry. People don’t know what’s non-negotiable vs what’s unique.
• The message loses power. You sound like everyone else, even if you’re not.

At First Principles, we help our clients understand this distinction early on—even if it takes a while to settle on a final version that feels right. The discussion around it is valuable to cut through fluff and get to the heart of what makes them who they are.

We also encourage our clients to include explanatory text. This brings everything to life, adds context, and creates an opportunity to stress-test. It shows you're not treating values as a tick-box exercise—it’s a way of making them real, relatable, and ready to be tested in practice. It’s about giving your values some teeth.

And in smaller, founder-led businesses, this matters even more. Because your values are the culture—whether you've named them or not. What you say yes to. What you walk away from. What your team quietly absorbs by watching you lead.

That’s why this is so powerful. It gives you a language for something that’s already there—so you can be consistent as you grow, hire, or hand things over.

You don’t need a manifesto. You just need to name what’s distinctively true for you—and what would feel wrong to compromise.

Not everything you value is a core value. But the ones that are? They deserve to be front and centre.

Walking Our Talk

We hold ourselves to the same standard. Here’s how we draw the line in our own work:

Our Permission-to-Play Values:
Integrity, transparency, respect, collaboration, fairness, accountability, curiosity, and kindness.
These are our baseline. If someone couldn’t meet these, we wouldn’t work with them—client or collaborator.

Our Core Values:

Our core values shape how we work, who we work with, and the kind of impact we aim to have. Each one helps us make decisions that stay true to what matters to us.

• Business should be a force for good – We champion the small, independent businesses because they nurture livelihoods, strengthen local communities, and participate in ways bigger players don't. We don't work with owners who put profit before people or extraction over contribution. We reserve our energy for those solving real problems, serving their communities, and building something meaningful.
• Build, don’t bind – We increase capability, not create dependency. That means sharing knowledge, simplifying systems, and actively encouraging you to outgrow us. While recurring revenue streams can be attractive, we always favour equipping you with the skills or tech to enable you to be self-sufficient.
• Practical over performative – We believe innovation only matters if it works in the real world. No fluff. No faking. Just tools, tech, and thinking that simplify, strengthen, and solve. If it isn’t useful, it isn’t ready. We take pride in our work, but we don’t let ego get in the way of sharing a first draft that hasn’t been polished or having a client get involved with early testing to help flush out the issues.
• Optimism with its sleeves rolled up – We believe a brighter future is possible—but not by wishing. Progress takes work. While others chase quick wins or sell big promises with little follow-through, we stay grounded and get stuck in. We help businesses shape a vision worth building—and walk beside them as they bring it to life, one deliberate step at a time.
• Contribution is a duty and a privilege – We’ve had help along the way—and we believe in paying it forward. We'd like to think the world will be a better place for having had us in it, and we look for ways to serve in the ‘every day’ as well as making an impact that outlives us.

These values influence what we say yes to, how we design our services, and how we behave when no one’s watching. They’re not ideals—they’re filters.

If You Wouldn't Walk Away, It’s Just a Motto

Real values cost something.
They shape what you walk toward—but also what you walk away from.

To stress-test your own, try this:

• Would you walk away from money?
  If a well-paying client clashed with this value, would you still uphold it?
  
  
• Would you slow your growth for it?
  Would you turn down a shortcut, investor, or partner if they didn’t align?
  
  
• Would your team back you up?
  If asked in private, would your people say “yes, we live this”?
  
  
• Would you be proud to share it—even when it’s inconvenient?
  Or does it live on the wall, not in your decisions?
  
  

And most importantly:

Where have you already paid a price to honour it?
That’s how you know it’s real.

Your values don’t need to sound impressive.
They need to be true.
They need to hold up when no one’s watching.

Over To You...

If you’re not sure where your real values lie, start by asking:

• What would I never compromise on, even if no one found out?
• What makes me feel proud of how we work, not just what we deliver?
• Where have I drawn the line—even when it cost me?

If you find yourself nodding along to every value you read, ask whether it’s truly yours—or just universally nice. This is about clarity, not virtue signalling.

To see how values can ring hollow when not backed by action, stay tuned for our upcoming post, where we examine how some major corporations' stated values contrast with their real-world practices.

And if you'd like someone to guide you through reviewing or setting your own core values, drop us a line. We're developing a new tool — The Values Test (coming soon) — designed to help small business owners uncover, stress-test, and share their values in a way that actually means something.