Story99.com is a Branding & Storytelling Consultancy for B2B, Tech & Deeptech

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Most companies describe their values using familiar words: integrity, innovation, collaboration, excellence, customer focus. These are all positive qualities, but that is also the problem. Almost every company would claim to value them.

A useful value must do more than sound admirable. It should help people decide what to do when two reasonable priorities conflict.

Should the team launch quickly or investigate an uncertainty further? Should it satisfy an important customer or protect the product roadmap? Should it retain a brilliant performer who damages the team? Should it pursue immediate revenue or invest in a capability that may take years to mature?

Neither choice is automatically correct. But the choices a company repeatedly makes reveal what it genuinely values.

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**The Story99 Values Compass is designed to uncover these recurring priorities.** It treats values as operating principles rather than aspirational adjectives.

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Values become visible through trade-offs

A company’s values are easiest to see when following them carries a cost.

It is easy to say that quality matters. The more revealing question is whether the company would delay a launch to protect quality.

It is easy to say that people matter. The real test is whether leadership would accept slower short-term execution to protect the health of the team.

A company may claim to value scientific rigour. But would it walk away from an attractive commercial opportunity because the supporting evidence is weak?

Something becomes a meaningful value when the organisation is prepared to sacrifice time, money, convenience, recognition or opportunity to protect it.

The Values Compass framework that we use at Story99, therefore asks:

When two desirable outcomes compete, which one are you more likely to protect?

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Why respondents make decisions instead of selecting words

Our exercise does not begin with a long list of values from which people choose their favourites. That method tends to produce predictable and idealised results.

Respondents naturally gravitate towards socially desirable words. Founders often select values that describe the company they hope to create rather than the organisation that currently exists. Several attractive words may also describe the same underlying idea, creating the illusion of a broad set of values when the result is conceptually narrow.

Instead, the Values Compass presents approximately 20 practical situations. Each one places several legitimate organisational instincts in tension. The respondent identifies the option that is “most like us” and the option that is “least like us.”

This forced-choice method makes it impossible to rate every desirable behaviour highly. It requires prioritisation and produces a clearer picture of what tends to win inside the company.