Most professional services firms have a set of core values that capture the essence of their organization. You probably do, too.

And most of the time nobody pays them any attention.

Chances are, your management team shed battalions of blood, sweat and tears developing those core values, penning draft after draft until they had a set of characteristics they could rally around. So why do the core values they worked so hard to perfect sit slumped in the corner like a bag of dirty laundry?

I have a couple of theories. These ideas are based on my observations over a couple of decades working with hundreds of firms.

First, they were written by a committee, and it shows. When a management team gathers to write their core values they have the best intentions. But often, the result reflects the many compromises the team had to make to reach a consensus. The larger the group, the more ideas get shoehorned into the end product. Which leads to my second observation…

Second, they are muddy. By muddy, I mean a number of things. Each value may be written in a way that combines multiple concepts, making them unfocused and complicated. They may be too long to easily digest. Or they may be written in confusing, abstract language, making them harder to grasp. Some may be too generic, repeating platitudes commonly used in the industry. Or there may simply be too many values on the list—people’s minds just aren’t built to internalize eight or ten core values.

Third, they are not visible. This is perhaps the most common reason core values fail. Employees are barely aware of them. It’s not enough to share core values with a new employee during the onboarding process or to post them in the office kitchen. To truly integrate your core values into your culture you must repeat them to your team again and again.

What Are Core Values For, Anyway?

Why do we even bother with core values? While they are not absolutely essential to running a successful business, they can play a useful—even pivotal—role if written and deployed correctly.

Let’s begin with a definition:

Your core values are a concise set of principles that define the way you work and contribute meaningfully to your success. They are essential to who you are and may not be compromised.

Think of core values as a set of legs that support your business and propel it forward. If you were to take away any of them, your firm would be very different. They should also be the foundation of your culture—a few carefully chosen words that motivate your team and muster them to achieve great things.

How to Write Effective Core Values

Here are my five rules for writing your core values:

  1. Choose values that will inspire your team and wow your clients. Your core values will set expectations for your current team and new hires. They will also affect the way clients experience your firm. So make them bold and inspiring.
  2. Keep them short. Select a word or brief phrase (no more than three words) that represents the value. Then follow it with a compact descriptive sentence—ideally no more than fifteen words—that explains the value.
  3. Use simple language. When you use short sentences and concrete, easy-to-understand words, you engage in a form of democracy, inviting everyone into the club. When you introduce abstract words and complexity, however, you erect a barrier that requires effort to overcome.
  4. Be consistent. If using single words values, either make them all nouns or all adjectives.
  5. No more than five. When it comes to motivating your team, more is not more. Three to five core values is the sweet spot. Any more than that and human psychology will work against you.

What do good core values look like in practice? Here’s an example of five tightly written ones:

  • Accountable: We take personal responsibility for the quality of our work.
  • Collaborative: We work best when we work together—and when the client is part of our team.
  • Empathetic: We are genuinely interested in our colleagues’ and clients’ lives and challenges.
  • Humble: While we have much to be proud of, we always give credit where it is due.
  • Outcome Driven: We have just one measure of our success—the outcomes our work product.

Notice how each value is just one or two words, and all are the same part of speech (adjectives, in this case). Each value is followed by a description, which uses just a few simple words to explain the value. Four of the five descriptions start with the word “We,” which makes it clear who they apply to. Each description also presents a simple idea, rather than a more “comprehensive” explanation. Most importantly, all of these values are concepts that employees can easily understand, embrace and strive to incorporate into their work habits.

What are the implications of these core values for the firm’s culture? This is a firm that values personal accountability and delivering results, which could for example manifest in the form of low tolerance for incomplete timesheets or non-compliance with any CRM they might have in place. At the same time, they balance this drive with humility, teamwork and respect. That’s a very specific kind of culture, one that won’t be a good fit for everyone. But if the firm can pull it off, these values should produce a very tight-knit, dynamic culture—and a superior client experience.

A Process that Works

What if you want to create or rework your firm’s core values? What’s the best way to go about it? Here’s what I’ve found works.

Before you begin, set yourself up for success. That means keeping the team small—three to five people at most—the fewer, the better. This team should have the authority to make final decisions, so choose your team accordingly.

Start by brainstorming a list of adjectives or nouns that your team thinks might make strong candidates. Don’t feel like you have to get too creative with your values. Many of the best ones are universally admired attributes, such as “empathy” or “collaboration.” If you need ideas, you can Google “core values examples” or use an AI tool such as ChatGPT, Copilot or Gemini to suggest many options.

Discuss what characteristics make your firm special—and which new ones might create a powerful advantage. Remove any options from consideration that don’t fit your vision.

Next, weed out the cliches, such as “excellence” or “trusted advisors.” They aren’t going to bring much electricity to your organization. Also drop any that feel flat, flabby or bland.

Now get ruthless. Look at the remaining list and evaluate each one using these criteria:

  • Is it achievable?
  • Will it inspire your team, or will it feel like a burden?
  • Will it improve the client experience, or is it just an internal value?
  • If you didn’t do that thing, would anyone notice?
  • Does it make you different from most of your competitors?
  • Will prospective new hires find it exciting and energizing?

Once you have narrowed the list to three to five core values, it’s time to explain them. This is where it’s easy to go wrong and get too long-winded, opaque or specific. You will be far better off keeping these descriptions loose and casual—refer back to the five writing rules above. Remember, they are intended to be practical, everyday guidelines for your team. Don’t worry about covering every detail or describing the benefits of each value. Pare your descriptions down to their essence. People will intuitively understand the rest.

Finally, get your core values out there. Often. Talk about them. Bring them up at all-hands meetings. Discuss them in employee reviews. Give shout-outs when an employee really delivers on one or more of them. Repeat them over and over. Instill them in your people, so that they not only accept them but include them in their own conversations.

That’s how you turn core values on paper into power.