Accountability
PerformanceOwning outcomes, not just activity. Honoring commitments and being transparent when they slip.
Behaviors
- Names a clear owner for every decision
- Reports status before being asked
- Acknowledges misses and proposes a fix
Anti-patterns
- Blaming process or other teams
- Vague 'we' instead of 'I'
- Quiet missed deadlines
Reinforce it with
- • Public commitment tracking
- • Weekly DRI updates
- • Retrospectives that name owners, not just causes
Accountability is the soil trust grows in. Without it, every other value softens.
Sharing context, data, and reasoning by default — so people can make great decisions without you.
Behaviors
- Defaults to open documents
- Shares the 'why' behind decisions
- Tells the hard truth early
Anti-patterns
- Need-to-know hoarding
- Polished updates that hide reality
- Backchannel decision making
Reinforce it with
- • Open metrics dashboards
- • Public meeting notes
- • Leadership AMAs
Transparency turns information from a power tool into a shared resource.
Customer obsession
PerformanceStarting with the customer and working backwards. Letting their reality outweigh internal politics.
Behaviors
- Talks to real customers weekly
- Reads support tickets unprompted
- Prioritizes customer pain over internal preference
Anti-patterns
- Designing for the org chart
- Treating NPS as a vanity metric
- 'The customer doesn't know what they want'
Reinforce it with
- • Customer call rotations
- • Voice-of-customer in every review
- • Empty chair for the customer in meetings
Keeps strategy honest and prevents inward-facing drift.
Treating every person as a full human being whose time, ideas, and dignity matter.
Behaviors
- Listens before responding
- Credits ideas to their source
- Disagrees with the idea, not the person
Anti-patterns
- Interrupting and steamrolling
- Sarcasm framed as 'just kidding'
- Status-based listening
Reinforce it with
- • Meeting norms
- • Anonymous feedback channels
- • Calling in, not calling out
Respect is the floor. Without it, no other value is safe.
Improving how things work by trying things that might not. Treating new ideas as cheap and easy to test.
Behaviors
- Runs small experiments
- Steals shamelessly from other industries
- Kills its own ideas when the data says so
Anti-patterns
- Innovation theater (hackathons, no follow-up)
- Punishing useful failure
- Defending legacy because it's legacy
Reinforce it with
- • Time-boxed experiment budget
- • Demo days with real users
- • Post-mortems that celebrate learning
Innovation is a habit, not a department.
Acting like a founder of the part of the company you can touch.
Behaviors
- Picks up the work no one owns
- Thinks past their job description
- Closes the loop
Anti-patterns
- 'Not my job'
- Escalating instead of solving
- Polished handoffs with no follow-through
Reinforce it with
- • Operating cadences
- • Founder stories
- • Public recognition for cross-team saves
Ownership compounds — every owned moment makes the next one easier.
Holding strong opinions loosely. Believing you can be wrong, and acting on it.
Behaviors
- Asks 'what am I missing?'
- Credits the team in public, takes blame in private
- Updates beliefs when evidence shifts
Anti-patterns
- Defending ego over outcomes
- Performative humility
- Quiet credit-taking
Reinforce it with
- • Pre-mortems
- • Red-team reviews
- • Promotion criteria that reward learning, not certainty
Humility is the doorway through which feedback walks.
Caring how the work is done, not just whether it ships.
Behaviors
- Sweats the second draft
- Refuses to ship known broken things
- Defines 'done' before starting
Anti-patterns
- 'Good enough' as a permanent setting
- Hero culture covering for poor process
- Quality only when leadership is watching
Reinforce it with
- • Quality bars and definitions of done
- • Craft reviews
- • Time budgeted for polish, not just delivery
Excellence is contagious — and so is its absence.
Saying the thing, doing the hard thing, even when it costs you something.
Behaviors
- Surfaces problems early
- Disagrees with senior people respectfully
- Makes the unpopular call when needed
Anti-patterns
- Polite silence in meetings, complaints in DMs
- Waiting for permission to do obvious things
- Avoiding hard feedback
Reinforce it with
- • Norms that reward dissent
- • Leaders modeling vulnerability
- • Protected channels for hard truths
Courage is what turns values from posters into practice.
Continuous improvement
GrowthTreating today's process as a draft. Small, regular changes over big, rare ones.
Behaviors
- Runs retros that lead to action
- Measures, then improves
- Looks for the next 1% every week
Anti-patterns
- 'This is how we've always done it'
- Retros without owners
- Annual reorgs as a substitute for daily learning
Reinforce it with
- • Kaizen boards
- • Time set aside for improvement work
- • Tracking improvements like features
Compounds quietly into a system that gets better while no one is looking.
Doing what you said you'd do, especially when it's inconvenient.
Behaviors
- Honors small commitments
- Tells the same story in every room
- Acts the same when no one is watching
Anti-patterns
- Different message to different audiences
- Quiet exceptions for senior people
- Spin disguised as positioning
Reinforce it with
- • Promise tracking
- • Clear escalation paths
- • Consequences that apply to everyone
Integrity is the value that makes every other value believable.
Understanding what it's like to be the other person before designing for them.
Behaviors
- Asks how a change will land for the team affected
- Listens for what isn't said
- Designs for the worst day, not the best
Anti-patterns
- Logic without care
- 'Tough love' that is mostly tough
- Empathy only for people like us
Reinforce it with
- • Shadowing customers and teammates
- • Inclusive design reviews
- • Manager training on listening
Empathy is what keeps performance human.
Choosing the team's outcome over personal credit. Making others better as part of the job.
Behaviors
- Writes things down so others can build on them
- Offers help before it's asked for
- Defaults to 'we'
Anti-patterns
- Hero solos
- Information hoarding
- Meetings as performance
Reinforce it with
- • Shared OKRs across teams
- • Pair work and reviews
- • Recognition for assists, not just goals
Collaboration is what turns a group of talented people into a team.
Asking "why" one more time than feels comfortable. Treating not-knowing as a starting point, not a weakness.
Behaviors
- Asks follow-up questions before proposing solutions
- Reads outside their own discipline
- Treats surprises as data, not annoyances
Anti-patterns
- Assuming the first answer is the right one
- Punishing "I don't know" instead of rewarding it
- Confusing confidence with correctness
Reinforce it with
- • Show-and-tell sessions across teams
- • Budget for exploratory research time
- • Leaders asking questions in public they don't know the answer to
Curiosity is what keeps excellence from calcifying into habit.
Bias for action
PerformancePreferring a reversible decision made today over a perfect one made next month.
Behaviors
- Ships small and learns fast
- Distinguishes one-way doors from two-way doors
- Defaults to trying, not debating
Anti-patterns
- Analysis paralysis dressed up as rigor
- Waiting for consensus that will never fully arrive
- Punishing fast decisions that turned out wrong
Reinforce it with
- • Explicit "reversible vs. irreversible" decision framing
- • Time-boxed decision deadlines
- • Celebrating speed, not just outcomes
Bias for action turns strategy into motion.
Psychological safety
TrustMaking it safe to say the awkward thing, ask the basic question, or admit the mistake — before it becomes a crisis.
Behaviors
- Responds to bad news with curiosity, not blame
- Admits their own mistakes first
- Separates the person from the failure
Anti-patterns
- Public blame for honest mistakes
- Punishing the messenger
- Silence in meetings, real opinions in hallways
Reinforce it with
- • Blameless post-mortems
- • Leaders modeling visible failure
- • Norms that protect dissent in the room it happens
Psychological safety is the precondition every other value depends on.
Choosing the solution that's easiest to understand and maintain, not the one that's most impressive to build.
Behaviors
- Removes steps before adding them
- Explains decisions in plain language
- Questions complexity that "just grew that way"
Anti-patterns
- Complexity as a status symbol
- Process added but never retired
- Jargon used to obscure, not clarify
Reinforce it with
- • Regular process/tooling audits
- • "What can we remove?" as a standing retro question
- • Rewarding subtraction, not just addition
Simplicity is a discipline, not an accident.
Making decisions the future version of the company will thank you for, even when it costs something now.
Behaviors
- Weighs second-order effects before deciding
- Invests in things that pay off past this quarter
- Says no to short-term wins that create long-term debt
Anti-patterns
- Optimizing for the next demo or review cycle
- Treating technical/culture debt as someone else's problem
- Decisions that look good in the deck, not in year two
Reinforce it with
- • Multi-year planning alongside quarterly OKRs
- • Rewarding decisions retroactively, once outcomes are known
- • Leaders explicitly naming trade-offs out loud
Long-term thinking is what protects the company from its own short-term wins.
Diversity of thought
PeopleActively seeking out perspectives that disagree with the room, because agreement is a warning sign, not a milestone.
Behaviors
- Invites the dissenting voice before finalizing a decision
- Builds teams with different backgrounds and default assumptions
- Treats "we all agree" as a prompt to look harder
Anti-patterns
- Hiring for culture "fit" instead of culture "add"
- Groupthink mistaken for alignment
- Token inclusion without real influence
Reinforce it with
- • Structured devil's-advocate roles in key decisions
- • Diverse hiring panels
- • Tracking whose ideas actually get adopted
Diversity of thought is what keeps a confident team from being a wrong one.
Absorbing setbacks without absorbing despair. Treating hard periods as temporary, not identity-defining.
Behaviors
- Separates the setback from self-worth
- Recovers focus quickly after a bad outcome
- Names what was learned, not just what was lost
Anti-patterns
- Spiraling into blame after failure
- Burnout treated as a badge of honor
- Avoiding hard projects to avoid the risk of failing
Reinforce it with
- • Post-failure retros focused on learning, not fault
- • Visible recovery stories from leadership
- • Sustainable pacing, not constant crunch
Resilience is what lets ambition survive contact with reality.