How to Discover Core Values for Your Company, Team, or Organization

Why Core Values Matter

Values are not slogans. They are not motivational posters in the lunchroom. They are the invisible operators of our actions.

Values as the invisible drivers of culture and results

Values define the culture of our organizations. They change slowly and, when honoured, become the steady rhythm that guides decisions, behaviours, and results.

Shared values build successful teams. They maximize good times and make hard work feel easy. They give us the strength to endure a crisis.

What happens when values are unclear or in conflict

But when values are unclear—or worse, in conflict—confusion, mistrust, and wasted energy creep in.

The good news? Values can be discovered, clarified, and lived. Organizations that take the time to do this consistently outperform those that don’t.

Lessons from Global Companies

Patagonia – Building loyalty through environmental stewardship

Patagonia has built its reputation on environmental stewardship. Its values show up in business decisions—from repairing old jackets instead of pushing new sales, to donating profits to environmental causes. Customers stay loyal because Patagonia’s values are visible in action.

LEGO – Rediscovering creativity as a core company value

LEGO nearly went bankrupt in the early 2000s. Their turnaround came when they returned to their core value: creativity through play. By grounding their strategy in imagination, LEGO reconnected with its roots, restored profitability, and reignited its fan base.

Pfizer – Acting with courage and excellence during crisis

Pfizer, during the COVID-19 pandemic, leaned on its values of courage and excellence. Speed was not luck. It was a culture trained to act boldly under pressure, while maintaining high standards of quality and safety.

Values-driven achievement is not theory. It’s strategy in action.

Real-World Examples of Values Discovery

MTU Canada – Respect, Openness, Improvement (ROI) in action

At MTU Maintenance Canada, a team of engineering leaders wanted to elevate the culture of the organization. Defining values was a key part of the process.

Engineers, by nature, are practical. They don’t want vague ideals—they want clarity, structure, and actionable principles. So, we created a simple framework of values summarized as ROI: Respect, Openness, and Improvement.

But values on their own weren’t enough. The team needed action statements and principles that would resonate in daily decisions. Here’s what they developed:

Show Respect

Drive Improvement

Be Open

These weren’t theoretical constructs. They became lived guidelines. Respect, openness, and improvement turned into a shared language for performance reviews, conflict resolution, and innovation.

ROI was not just a return on investment—it became a return on integrity.

Yosemite Pathology – Quality, Compassion, Integrity, Innovation

At Yosemite Pathology, we worked with the leadership team to clarify the values driving the administrative arm of this medical practice. Unsurprisingly, the patient was at the centre of everything.

The organization landed on four values:

Jennifer Pinasco, CEO, often highlights how these values drive behaviour. When COVID-19 hit, the lab launched testing in just ten days—a result of their culture of innovation, supported by compassion and integrity.

Their values became more than ideals. They became a roadmap for decisions, from adopting new technologies to supporting frontline staff through pandemic stress.

The lesson? When values are clear, even crises become opportunities for excellence.

Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL) – Balancing safety, accountability, and innovation

At Atomic Energy of Canada Limited (AECL), the leadership team identified five core values:

These values were underpinned by two non-negotiable beliefs:

In the values discovery process, we uncovered an important reality: values can conflict.

Engineers and operators valued control, predictability, and security. Innovators pushed for creativity and experimentation. These forces clashed in key decisions.

The breakthrough came when we acknowledged that accountability, integrity, and respect (the “controlling values”) had to be honoured first. Once a baseline of safety and security was established, innovation and collaboration could thrive.

This balance created an organizational culture that could both safeguard the public and push the boundaries of nuclear technology.

The Step-by-Step Process to Discover Core Values

So how do you discover and define values for your company, team, or organization?

Here’s the process I use in workshops, refined over years of coaching and consulting:

1. Begin with a Beginner’s Mind

Drop assumptions. Listen without judgment. Be curious. Ask people what truly matters, not what they think “should” matter.

2. Identify Value Words

Generate a list of value words that represent the ideal character of your company. Don’t censor. Words like integrity, courage, service, excellence, adventure, or learning might emerge.

3. Cluster Like Words Together

Group synonyms and related terms. “Integrity, honesty, truth” might cluster as Integrity. “Energy, vitality, flow” might cluster as Vitality.

4. Pick 3–5 Core Values

Less is more. Too many values dilute focus. Choose the essentials—the ones that will endure through crises and market shifts.

Explore the team core values discovery process in more detail.

5. Test the Ecology of Values

Do your values fit together? Do they balance each other? Do they create healthy tension, or destructive conflict? This step is critical—at AECL, it was where the breakthrough happened.

Read more here to pressure test the values of your team.

6. Put Values to Work

This is where most organizations fall short. Values must move beyond posters and websites. They need to live in hiring practices, performance reviews, strategy sessions, and daily decision-making.

Here are more examples of how past clients have put their values to work, building the cultures of thier organizations.

Why Values Discovery is a Leadership Imperative

Values discovery is not a “soft” exercise. It is one of the most powerful tools for building sustainable performance.

Clear values increase influence and efficiency

When values are clear:

Alignment between values and strategy creates lasting results

In my work across industries—from aerospace to healthcare to engineering—the same truth holds: when values are aligned, strategy sticks.

Closing

Values are not static, but they are steady. They shift slowly, like a river shaping rock. They are the DNA of your culture, the operating system of your organization, and the filter that remains when tactics, markets, and technologies change.

Values are steady anchors in changing markets

When discovered, clarified, and lived, values don’t just help organizations succeed.

They help them endure.

Clear values turn ordinary teams into extraordinary ones

Clear values turn ordinary teams into extraordinary ones—and make the hard work worth doing.

–––––

Adam Kreek is on a mission to positively impact organizational cultures and leaders who make things happen.

Kreek is an Executive Business Coach who lives in Victoria, BC, near Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, and Seattle, Washington, USA, in the Pacific Northwest. He works with clients globally, often travelling to California in the San Francisco Bay Area, Atlanta, Georgia, Toronto, Ontario and Montreal, Quebec. He is an Olympic Gold Medalist, a storied adventurer and a father.

He authored the bestselling business book, The Responsibility Ethic: 12 Strategies Exceptional People Use to Do the Work and Make Success Happen. 

Discover our thoughts on Values here.

Want to increase your leadership achievement? Learn more about Kreek’s coaching here.

Want to book a keynote that leaves a lasting impact? Learn more about Kreek’s live event service here.