Values are just words. Culture is what people actually do.

Credit: Ildo Frazao

Last week, I attempted to locate the company’s values on the website for a company I previously worked with. It took me a while to find them. For some reason, I had assumed they were front and center, but they were located under strategy. My search resulted from a conversation about values from a company I work with frequently. This company hardly prioritizes values, which sparked the conversation.

It resulted in a wave of curiosity about culture and values. And another Insight.

Many companies fail to live up to their values, but every organization has a culture, encompassing both explicit and implicit values and norms. As an example, Enron had integrity as one of its core values, and we all know what happened as a result. While the values prescribed integrity, senior executives were cheating the system. Values and culture were not in line, to put it mildly.

Values are just words. Culture is what people actually do.

Values are intentions. They’re what you say you care about. They appear in presentations, websites, recruitment ads, and kitchen mugs. They’re the words leadership teams carefully pick after long workshops.

Culture, on the other hand, is reality. It’s what actually happens when no one’s…