For arm's-length bodies and smaller public organisations, values have a practical role. These organisations bring together people with different professional backgrounds and personal convictions, often to make decisions that affect the public. Shared values can help create consistency in how those decisions are made, how employees work together, and how the organisation's purpose is experienced in practice.
A team leader once described reading the values of an organisation they were joining, not merely skimming them, but considering them properly. They found nothing they disagreed with. That was reassuring, but it prompted a question: if people already have their own sense of right and wrong, do organisational values add anything meaningful, or are they simply there to sound good?
Few people go into a meeting thinking, this is where I live the values. That's not how it shows up. Values are great for reflecting afterwards. When you replay conversations. When you think about moments where something felt slightly off, or unexpectedly right. And you ask yourself whether your behaviour actually matched what you believe in, and what the organisation says it believes in.
The more you do that, the less effort it takes. Over time, it stops being a conscious exercise and turns into habit. You don’t need to remind yourself. You just act.
But that still leaves a bigger question.
On the surface, that feels reasonable. Most people come to work wanting to do the right thing. But work isn't an individual activity; it's a shared environment. And once you're in a shared environment, "being decent" quickly starts to mean different things to different people, because common sense isn't always that common.
That's where shared values come in. Not because personal values are wrong or insufficient, but because decency on its own is too vague to help a group function consistently. Which leads to a different question altogether. If shared values are necessary, whose values should they be?
We already accept that our behaviour changes depending on where we are. I don't behave the same way with my parents as I do with my friends. And I certainly wouldn't behave the same way with friends as I would if I were to meet His Majesty the King. I'm still me in all those situations, but each setting brings out a different side of me.
The same is true for values. If I'm facing someone who's homeless, values like kindness, generosity, and empathy naturally come to the front. If I'm playing a team sport, the situation calls for determination, fairness, selflessness, and playing by the rules. Those values don't compete with each other. They belong to different contexts.
Work is just another context. It has its own demands. Its own pressures. Its own consequences. For arm’s-length bodies and smaller public organisations, those consequences extend beyond the workplace. People must often balance organisational priorities, public accountability and the experience of those who depend on their services. Doing that well requires a shared understanding of how we behave, how we decide, and how we treat one another.
That's what organisational values are really doing. They're not there to replace your personal values. They exist because the organisation is trying to create a particular kind of workplace experience and establish a particular reputation among its employees and the public. Those choices come with expectations.
This is where fit starts to matter. If an organisation's values already exist in you, alignment feels natural. Acting in line with them doesn't feel like effort. Over time, it's sustainable. If those values don't exist in you, something else happens. You might be able to comply for a while, but eventually you'll default to what feels right to you. Not because your values are bad, but because they're different from what the environment requires.
That's how cultural friction starts. Not through malice or incompetence, but through values misalignment.
I think about values a bit like clothing. I have winter clothes and summer clothes. They're all mine. They reflect my style. But I don't wear a winter coat to the beach or shorts in the snow. The context decides what works. Factory workers wear protective clothing because the environment demands it. Athletes wear specific kit because it helps them perform and play by the rules of the game. Similarly, organisational values are what employees "wear" during working hours so that people can operate safely, fairly, and predictably together.
Seen this way, shared values aren't about moral superiority or forcing people to be the same. They're about coordination.
Workplaces are micro-societies. We need shared rules to avoid chaos. We like to joke in the UK that we invented queuing. Imagine if half of us believed in it and the other half didn't. The system wouldn't fail because one group was unethical, but because shared expectations disappeared. Values do the same job at work. They give us a common reference point, especially when things are unclear or uncomfortable. They quietly shape how it feels to work somewhere. That's the employee experience people talk about, whether they use that language or not.
This is where character comes in.
In his book On Character, General Stanley McChrystal makes a point that stuck with me: character isn't something you're born with. It's something you build. His formula is simple:
Character = Convictions x Discipline
Convictions are what you believe in. Discipline is choosing to act in line with those beliefs, again and again. One without the other doesn't do much. Convictions without discipline stay theoretical. Discipline without convictions has no direction.
At work, organisational values become shared convictions. But they only matter if individuals choose to live them consistently. Especially when it's inconvenient. Especially when no one is watching. That's how culture actually forms. Not through statements or posters, but through small, everyday choices.
So whose values at work matter more?
Not yours alone. Not the organisation's in isolation. What matters is alignment, fit, and the discipline to act in line with shared values over time. When that happens, values stop being something employees talk about. They become something they experience. And that's when character shows up, not just in individuals, but in the organisation itself.
I've found that when values fit, people don't think about them much at all. When they don't, everyone feels it very quickly. That difference teaches teams more than any values statement ever could.
If you’re facing challenges around setting and embedding values, let’s explore them. There are proven approaches that can make designing, communicating, and embedding values and principles for your organisation.
