Top 5 Questions To Ask When Creating Company Core Values

The team here at Y Scouts is currently undertaking a fun and important task: defining our company core values.

It’s been about two years since we founded our purpose-based leadership search firm. We figured with the growth of our team and with the growth ahead of us, it’d be a great time to revisit the values that guide us in our decision making process.

What questions are we asking ourselves when creating these core values? What questions should your company and leadership team be asking when creating your organization’s core values? Here’s the top 5 core values questions that we’ve found to be useful during the process.

1. Would you personally hold on to these core values if you retired tomorrow?

2. If you started a new company in a different industry, would you implement these core values into the new organization regardless of its purpose?

3. Can you envision your employees 100 years from now living by these values?

4. If employees weren’t recognized for practicing the core values, would you still consider these values to be fundamental to your organization?

5. Even if at some point, these core values became a competitive disadvantage, would you still want the organization to hold on to these values?

These questions help to make the distinction between values and business strategies. Core values stay true regardless of the factors that come with the passing of time. Strategies and business practices are changing all the time. If your leadership team can answer “yes” for each of the core values chosen, then you’ve created the identity and foundation of your organization.

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