📝 If It Doesn’t Shape a Decision, It’s Not a Value

A practical guide to writing values with teeth (and using them)

Brand values are too often a wishlist of vibes rather than a tool for action. But when done right, they guide hiring, behavior, and decision-making across an organization. This is your cheat sheet for crafting values with teeth, so they don’t just sound good, they do good.

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👋 Hi, I'm Amanda. I'm a brand strategist and fractional CMO. I help founder-led businesses turn belief into brand—and brand into a strategic asset that works as hard as you do. I share weekly deep dives with actionable advice on brand building—plus interviews with the people in the trenches. I also work 1:1 with founders and teams. Book a chat here.

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Who will love this

• People who break out in hives at the words “authentic” and “innovative”

• Culture nerds who secretly want to burn the corporate values poster

• Anyone mid-rebrand and wondering WTF to do with values

• Leaders who actually want to build a values-led org—not just look like one

Today

G’day & happy Friday.

Trying something a little different today: I’m calling it Note to Self (because obviously, everything needs a brand). If you’re into it, let me know—we’ll see how it goes. The idea is to do specific deep dives on tactics you can file away in case you ever run into this very specific conundrum or situation.

Today’s topic? Organizational values.

Most organizations treat values like a wishlist of nice things they’d like to manifest:
“Generosity!” “Teamwork!” “Creativity!”

But say it with me now: just 👏 because 👏 you 👏 write 👏 it 👏 down 👏 doesn’t 👏 mean 👏 anyone 👏 is 👏 going 👏 to 👏 use 👏 it.

That’s the problem with a lot of strategy—it’s pretty words on a page, not a tool for making real decisions. I’ve worked on organizational strategy for clients and for organizations I’ve been in - B2B and B2C, and I see the same challenges across categories and types of businesses. And today I’m going to share the ☕️!

I touched on this in last week’s post on Southwest Airlines, but values sit squarely in what I’d call organizational strategy (which does make its way into branding projects, but not every project). I’ve worked on a fair few of these projects, and I still think brand values are widely misunderstood, misused, or just… wasted effort.

Maybe you’re in the middle of a rebrand. Maybe you’ve been asked to revisit values as part of a broader change. Either way, in this newsletter, you’ll get:

✅ What brand values should do
⚠️ What most orgs get wrong
📌 Examples of values in action
🧠 A framework to define them
🔧 Bonus: how to actually operationalize them

Let’s get into it. ✌️

Amanda

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The mug that inspired this piece. Southwest is a legendary example of a business that has clearly cultivated a brand and values led organization.

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What Are Values, Really?

In my experience, brand values show up when a company wants to go deeper than surface-level brand refreshes. M&A activity is one place this stuff has surfaced for clients of mine - because you have two (or more) different cultures coming together. This isn’t about changing the logo—it’s about shifting how the organization operates.

Values are the closest thing we have to codifying culture. And like brand, culture can be guided but never fully controlled. It’s shaped by everyone in the business, every day, moment to moment.

Values are a choice: to make explicit what you stand for and how people should behave.

At their best, values are used for:

• Modelling behaviour - from the executive suite down

• Recognizing and rewarding contribution

• Hiring and screening for fit

At their worst, they become:

• A feel-good word cloud

• Another layer of fluff on top of an already bloated strategy doc

• A wishlist for better employee behavior (with no plan to back it up)

Executives spend too much time drafting, wordsmithing, and redrafting vision statements, mission statements, values statements, purpose statements, aspiration statements, and so on. They spend nowhere near enough time trying to align their organizations with the values and visions already in place. - Jim Collins

Case Study: 3M

Jim Collins is the master of studying organizations, and I’ve experienced what he’s written about: the wordsmithing is the easy part - and the part that organizations love to do. The really hard work is operationalizing them into concrete mechanisms that translated value into action. For example, Collins found that 3M:

• Allows scientists to spend 15 percent of their time working on whatever interests them

• Requires divisions to generate 30 percent of their revenues from new products introduced in the past four years

• Has an active internal venture capital fund to support promising new ventures

• Preserves a dual career track to encourage innovators to remain innovators rather than become managers

• Grants prestigious awards for innovations and entrepreneurial success¹

That is an organization that has deeply thought about what behaviours it needs to cultivate in order to be successful. 3M could say, “We celebrate innovation.” But that’s very different from creating mechanisms like the above to actually catalyze innovation.

Case Study: Patagonia

“We knew that uncontrolled growth put at risk the values that had made the company succeed so far. Those values couldn’t be expressed in a how-to operations manual that offers pat answers. We needed philosophical and inspirational guides to make sure we always asked the right questions and found the right answers. We spoke of these guides as philosophies, one for each of our major departments and functions.” Yvon Choinard

If you know me, you know I’m a Patagonia fangirl with the 8 year old, many-times-repaired puffer jackets to show for it. One of the stories in ‘Let My People Go Surfing,’ Patagonia’s manual for employees, is about the crafting of Patagonia’s values - after it had to lay off 20% of its workforce in 1991. After a meeting where the board of directors struggled to put into words the company’s values and mission statement, Jerry Mander presented the below:

We begin with the premise that all life on Earth is facing a critical time, during which survivability will be the issue that increasingly dominates public concern. Where survivability is not the issue, the quality of human experience of life may be, as well as the decline in health of the natural world as reflected in the loss of biodiversity, cultural diversity, and the planet’s life support systems.

The root causes of this situation include basic values embodied in our economic system, including values of the corporate world. Primary among the problematic corporate values are the primacy of expansion and the short-term profit over such other considerations as quality, sustainability, environmental and human health, and successful communities.

The fundamental goal of this corporation is to operate in such a manner that we are fully aware of the above conditions, and attempt to re-order the hierarchy of corporate values, while producing products that enhance both human and environmental conditions.

To help achieve these changes, we will make our operating decisions based on the following list of values. They are not presented in order of importance. All are equally important. They represent an “ecology” of values that must be emphasized in economic activity that can mitigate the environmental and social crisis of our times.

• All decisions of the company are made in the context of the environmental crisis. We must strive to do no harm. Wherever possible, our acts should serve to decrease the problem. Our activities in this area will be under constant evaluation and reassessment as we seek constant improvement.

• Maximum attention is given to product quality, as defined by durability, minimal use of natural resources (including materials, raw energy, and transport), multifunctionalism, nonobsolescence, and the kind of beauty that emerges from absolute suitability to task. Concern over transitory fashion trends is specifically not a corporate value.

• The board and management recognize that successful communities are part of a sustainable environment. We consider ourselves to be an integral part of communities that also include our employees, the communities in which we live, our suppliers and customers. We recognize our responsibilities to all these relationships and make our decisions with their general benefit in mind. It is our policy to employ people who share the fundamental values of this corporation, while representing cultural and ethnic diversity.

• Without giving its achievement primacy, we seek to profit on our activities. However, growth and expansion are values not basic to this corporation.

• To help mitigate any negative environmental consequence of our business activity, we impose on ourselves an annual tax of 1 percent of our gross sales, or 10 percent of profits, whichever is greater. All proceeds of this tax are granted to local community and environmental activism.

• All all levels of operation—board, management and staff—Patagonia encourages proactive stances that reflect our values. These include activities that influence the larger corporate community to also adjust its values and behavior, and that support, through activism and financially, grassroots and national campaigners who work to solve the current environmental and social crisis.

• In our internal operations, top management will work as a group, and with maximum transparency. This includes an “open book” policy that enables employees easy access to decisions, within normal boundaries of personal privacy and “trade secrecy.” Ata ll levels of corporate activity, we encourage open communications, a collaborative atmosphere, and maximum simplicity, while we simultaneously seek dynamism and innovation.

I mean, mic drop. 🎤 Really, this is next level stuff. It’s a philosophy, it’s clear, it’s explicit, it’s linked to real action and decisions, and it’s nuanced. Doesn’t get much better than that.

But let’s be real—most of us aren’t working with Yvon Chouinard or leading a company with a manifesto taped to the front door. What do you do when you're stuck with a pile of vague corporate values that feel more like a word cloud than a compass?

Enter: The "Even Over" Framework

I’ve stopped using single-word values (creativity, kindness) and vague phrases (do the right thing, get shit done). They sound great. They do very little. It’s giving florals for spring.

The best organizations I’ve worked with are crystal clear on how they make decisions. And those decisions often come down to trade-offs. That’s where even over statements come in. In short, the even over statement is:

[something we value] even over [something we also value]

The difference here, is that most organizations say - we value [x]. But [x] is a good thing - who doesn’t value it? The beauty of an even over statement is that it should guide a decision between two good things.

Instead of vague aspirations, they offer clarity and priorities. For example:

• Margin, even over market share (luxury goods, for example)

• Market share, even over margin (Amazon, probably)

That small shift makes a huge difference—it turns values into something useful. Credit where credit is due: Nobl Collective put this tool on my radar, which I’ve adapted slightly for brand and organizational definition work.

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How I’ve Crafted Values (For Real)

Have you ever worked somewhere where the company’s values were actually used?

For most people, the answer is no. And that’s probably by design (or fear of commitment!) Committing to specific behaviors means closing off other paths. But it also gives teams freedom to act with confidence and alignment.

Here’s how I’ve approached it:

1. Listen first. What do employees say the organization really values? What shows up on Glassdoor? What do exit interviews reveal? In some cases, there’s already a set of values or standards. If so, I like to ask people if they can tell you what those values are without looking at them: that’ll give you a good signal of how useful they are.

2. Facilitate leadership input. What kind of behaviors should be rewarded? What kinds of decisions should people feel confident making? (Some industries and orgs want risk-takers. Others very much do not. Financial services, I’m looking at you!) If you already have a set of values, ask: are they clear? Actionable? Do they actually guide decision-making? If you don’t have a set of values, look at your company strategy (usually I look at a purpose statement but YMMV) and ask your leadership team to reflect on the following questions:

   1. What does this strategy require of my role?

   2. What does this strategy require of my team?

   3. What does this strategy require of all employees in this organization?

3. Craft even over statements. Pour yourself a bevvy and craft up some even over statements. You’re not going to get it ‘right’ so don’t overthink it. The point is to start with something and then facilitate another discussion (likely with your leadership team). I tend to use Google docs and invite people to jump in and comment, then gather people for a discussion. In this phase, you should be generating discussion about:

   1. What behaviour is most essential to the success of our organization?

   2. Are we willing to sacrifice (money, people who aren’t the right fit, potential fame) in order to hold true to our values?

   3. Have we clearly explained why this is important to us, in ways that could be easily understood across the organization? (I usually do this in 2-3 sentences following an even/over statement).

4. Stress-test the trade-offs. Can your team use these to choose between two good options? A helpful stress test in this phase is to ask your management team put on the ‘hat’ of everyone in their team: could the most junior person in the organization make a decision based on these values? Could the CEO?

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How Do You Operationalize Values? Thoughtstarters

No point creating a framework that just sits in a Notion doc. Here are a few ways I’ve seen values actually live inside companies:

• Self evaluations. Invite leaders to reflect: how well am I embodying these things? How well are we embodying these things?

• Hiring & recognition. Recognize and reward team members embodying the values that helps us manifest our purpose.

• Onboarding. Introduce even overs in induction handbooks as an orientation: how we do things around here.

• Action meetings. Screenshot these principles keep them visible during weekly action meetings.

• Retrospectives. Screenshot these principles and reflect on them for 1 minute prior to a quarterly retrospective. Are they helping us make decisions?

• Merch! Joking but not joking. Put your values on your walls. Make mugs out of them (if you’re Southwest). Mail them out to new employees in your onboarding packages.

At the risk of sounding like a very sincere millennial: this stuff matters.

If leaders are frustrated that “people don’t get it,” but haven’t made expectations clear—they’re not doing enough to steward the culture they want.

Left to chance, culture evolves on its own. Sometimes that’s great. Sometimes… not so much. Values are like brand: you already have them. The only question is whether they’re helping you—or holding you back.

That’s all for today’s dive. Let me know if you have questions.

✌️ Amanda

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Hot jobs 👀

Some interesting in-house and agency gigs I’ve seen on the worldwide web this week.

• [In-house] Bark are hiring a Head of Brand in New York.

• [Agency] Digitas is hiring a Senior VP of Brand Strategy in New York.

• [Agency] COROS watches are hiring a Senior Brand Designer based in Boulder, CO.

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Brand news 🗞️

• This campaign for Expo-West by Mid-Day Squares is brilliant. Would you guys find it interesting if I did interviews with people like these guys on the nuts and bolts of how they brought campaigns like this to life?

• I’m kind of obsessed with this Figma work. It’s a great example of a tech company going against the grain of talking about product features and instead telling a human story.

• This fun reverse job ad for an ECD by a copy/art team caught my eye this week. Made me want to do a newsletter of deep dives on interesting personal brands / campaigns. If that’s interesting to you let me know.

• This Brooks campaign caught some eyes last week, and not in a great way.

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1. Source: Jim Collins