Goal Core · Purpose · Module
Core values
The small set of commitments the organisation will not trade, even when trading them would be profitable — which is the only test that separates a value from a preference.
The idea
How it works
Values sit alongside purpose because they answer the same question from the other side. Purpose says why the organisation exists; values say what it will not do in order to continue existing. Neither is a goal and neither can be completed.
The test Collins and Porras proposed remains the sharpest one available: would the organisation keep this value even if it became a competitive disadvantage? A value that costs nothing has not been tested, and a value nobody has ever paid for is a preference wearing a stronger word.
Working with it
In practice
- 01
Keep the list to three or four
Every addition weakens the set. A list of eight is a list nobody can recall, which means it is a list nobody applies.
- 02
Name the price each has been paid
A real value has cost something — a deal declined, a hire not made, a shortcut refused. Where no instance exists, the value is untested.
- 03
Exclude the ones everyone holds
Integrity and quality are entry requirements rather than values. Anything a competitor could not credibly disclaim is not distinguishing anything.
- 04
Enforce them at departure, not at induction
Values are established by what happens to a high performer who breaches one. Everything else is a poster.
One level in
The components of core values
A component is something that exists afterwards which did not exist before — a deliverable or a mechanism, not an intention.
The enforcement record
What actually happens when a value is breached, including by someone valuable.
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A value that has never cost anything has never been tested. Find the occasion or drop the word.
The other modules in purpose
Reason for being
The articulation itself: one sentence saying why the organisation exists, written so that it would still hold if the product changed entirely.
LearnStakeholder rationale
Whom the purpose is for, and what each of them gets from it. Naming them makes the purpose answerable to someone rather than to no one.
LearnAlignment
How the purpose is actually used: which decisions are tested against it, at what points, and by whom. Without a mechanism, alignment is an intention.
LearnIntegrity
The distance between the purpose as stated and the purpose as enacted. Worth measuring deliberately, because the gap is invisible from the inside and obvious from the outside.
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