Building business core values means clarifying the collective behaviors the organization chooses to practice daily—not selecting beautiful words for communication. When you understand this correctly, your entire approach to the challenge of culture changes.
Perhaps you have sat in a two-day “culture positioning” workshop where the whole team enthusiastically wrote words on the board such as Integrity—Creativity—Service. Those words are then printed on posters, put on office walls, and added to onboarding slides. And three months later, everything remains the same. Still meetings without conclusions. Still a culture of silence when the boss is wrong. Still a gap between words and actions.
The problem is not your choice of words. It is that you are building from the outside in—instead of the inside out.
1. Core Values Are Not Created—They Are Recognized
Many organizations approach core values as a creative task: “What kind of organization do we want to become?” The question is not wrong, but often produces aspirations rather than truth.
Perhaps you have seen a company declare “Mutual Trust” as a value while every decision requires three approval levels. Or declare “Courageous Innovation” while anyone proposing a new idea is asked “What are the risks?” before “What is the opportunity?”
The truth is: every organization has already have culture. The question is not “What culture will we build?” but “What culture is actually operating here — and do we want to keep it?”
True core values are not what you aspire to become. They are what you are willing to pay a price to protect, even when inconvenient or costly.
The first step in building a business's core values, therefore, is an honest inventory: Observe what the organization is actually behave how in difficult moments — when interests conflict, when deadlines weigh heavily, when you must choose between doing things correctly and doing them quickly.
2. From the Inside Out: Leaders Must Be the First to Live Those Values
There is a truth few people want to state openly in the meeting room: organizational culture is the leader's magnified shadow.
Not the shadow of vision or strategy, but of daily behavior. How you react to bad news. How you treat people with different views. How you handle your own mistakes.
Perhaps you have seen this clearly: an organization declares “Continuous Learning,” but when an employee fails, the boss seeks someone to blame instead of asking “What is the lesson?” Just one such reaction tells the whole team implicitly: this organization offers false safety, not real learning.
This is why I often tell the CEOs I work with: a leader's first task in building core values is not defining values — but asking themselves “Am I truly living by this?”
You cannot convey what you do not yet have. Culture spreads downward—never upward.
In Teacher Saga’s books, especially Starting a Business with Right Livelihood, this perspective is developed more deeply: an awakened leader does not separate “me as a person” from “me as a leader”—they are one. That very wholeness is the foundation of culture that cannot be faked.
3. Core Values Must Be Translated Into Observable Behavior
This is the technical step most organizations skip — and precisely why beautiful values remain only on the wall.
For each core value, answer: “What specific behaviors demonstrate that this value is alive in the organization — and what behaviors demonstrate that it is being violated?”
A general example: If the organization chooses the value “Honesty”, then:
- Behaviors that demonstrate it: Employees proactively report problems before being asked. Leaders admit when they do not know. Feedback is given directly, not through hallway rumors.
- Violating behaviors: Staying silent in meetings, then talking behind people's backs. Reports are “beautified” before reaching the boss. Telling the truth only when asked, never proactively.
When a value is translated into specific behavior like this, it stops being a philosophy and becomes a management tool. You can recruit and assess performance based on it, and most importantly, immediately recognize when it is being ignored.
4. Three Layers of Checks to Know Whether Values Are Real
I often use these three questions as a simple filter—no lengthy workshop needed:
Level 1 — Do values exist in difficult decisions?
The last time the organization had to choose between short-term profit and doing the right thing — what did you choose? That answer reveals real values more than any poster.
Level 2 — Are values protected even when costly?
Perhaps you faced this situation: a large contract, but obtaining it requires doing something contrary to what you publicly stand for. What do you do then? That answer is real cultural data.
Level 3 — Are values implemented equally at every level?
If employees are disciplined for violating a value while senior leaders violate it without consequences, the organization is sending a clear message: values apply only to those with less power. That culture will gradually become one of organized dishonesty.
Core values are not what you say on the first onboarding day. They are what newcomers observe in their first 90 days and conclude for themselves without being told.
5. Building Processes From the Inside Out—Four Practical Steps
There is no single formula. But here is the framework I have found works consistently, regardless of organizational size:
Step 1: Gather real data—not aspirations.
Gather specific stories: the organization's proudest moments, its best handling of crises, and times someone did the right thing without being asked. Those stories contain real values.
Step 2: Look for patterns—not a majority vote.
Core values are not elected democratically. They are recognized by people qualified to read the culture. Ask: what common thread appears in those best stories?
Step 3: Translate into behavior—in your organization's language.
Do not use generic management language. Use the language your team actually speaks every day. If a value sounds ‘straight out of a textbook,’ it will stay in the textbook.
Step 4: Leaders commit to practicing first—publicly and observably.
Not through declarations, but through small, repeated behaviors. A meeting in which the leader openly says ‘I was wrong here’ is worth more than a hundred culture training sessions.
6. Practice Now—A 5-Minute Exercise for Leaders
You do not need a workshop. You only need 5 minutes and honesty.
Take a sheet of paper and divide it in half. On the left, write: “The organizational values I declare.” On the right, write: “The three behaviors I observed most often in the organization last week.”
Look at those two columns. Do they match?
The gap between the two columns is the gap between declared culture and actual culture. A leader's job is to narrow that gap, not by rewriting the left column but by changing what appears in the right.
Then select a specific behavior that you — you yourself, not your team — will practice differently next week. Just one behavior. Small enough to start. Real enough to create change.
Culture is not built through grand decisions. It is built through thousands of small actions by leaders every day.
7. A Culture of Awareness—When an Organization Has an Inner Teacher
There is a deeper layer few management resources address.
An organization—like an individual—can also operate from a state of react (reactive) or from a state of awareness. A reactive organization builds values from fear: fear of losing to competitors, losing customers, or employees leaving. However beautifully expressed, those values carry the energy of contraction.
A mindful organization builds values from a different question: “What are we here to serve?” Not serving shareholders, but serving a greater purpose and making a real contribution to the surrounding world.
When that question becomes the organization's true compass, core values no longer need reminders — they naturally live in every decision, every conversation, and every crossroads the organization faces.
This is what I call Mindful Corporate Culture — not a management trend, but a state of maturity an organization can reach when its leaders dare to look within first.
If you want to go deeper into this journey—in both its spiritual and management dimensions—I invite you to explore the books I have written on this subject, from Starting a Business with Right Livelihood to The Journey of Awakening.
Building business core values is not a one-time workshop task. It is a continuous journey—for leaders, teams, and the whole organization—to live closer to who they truly are.
It is not easy. But it is possible.
Tạ Minh Tuấn (Saga)
Frequently asked questions
Where should building business core values begin?
Begin with real observation—not aspirations. Gather concrete stories of moments when the organization behaved at its best, then find common patterns. Core values are recognized from real data, not invented on a whiteboard.
Why do beautifully defined core values still fail to become part of the actual culture?
Because they have not been translated into observable behaviors. A value lives within an organization only when everyone knows what it looks like in practice—which behaviors express it and which violate it.
What role do CEOs and leaders play in building corporate culture?
Leaders must be the first to live the values — not the last to be reminded of them. Culture flows downward from leaders' daily behavior, never in the opposite direction.
How long does building genuine corporate culture take?
There is no fixed number. Culture is formed through thousands of small, repeated behaviors. Observable changes typically emerge after 6–12 months if leaders commit to consistent practice, not merely consistent talk.
How does a mindful corporate culture differ from traditional management approaches?
Traditional approaches often build culture from the outside in — through procedures, policies, and training. A conscious corporate culture grows from the inside out, beginning with the leader's awareness and behavior and then spreading naturally throughout the organization.