Can you build a company culture by writing your values on a website? From what I've seen, no. I spent about ten years at small companies and startups, and at a few of them I helped set the culture and values with outside consultants. The one thing every consultant told us was simple: values are lived, not spoken. You see a company's real values in what people do every day, and in who it hires.
I recorded this as a Cantonese voice note, with English subtitles on screen.
Why is it easier to set culture at a small company?
Because the company is still forming, and there are only a few people to agree. My wife likes to remind me that I've never worked for a big company. That's true. At a giant like Microsoft the brand is huge, but most people there aren't writing Windows. You're one person far away from the big moments, and I'll admit I didn't have that kind of ability anyway.
Small companies have one thing that's a lot of fun. At a few of them, I got to help decide the culture and values, because the company was new. One boss called it a "restart". The business had been just a husband and wife, two people, slowly growing. Then they hired a group of us, and it became a new chapter. Another place was a real startup.
A one-person shop doesn't need any of this. But as it grows, or when a startup starts to scale, that's when you set the culture and values. And you can be part of it, which is much harder to do inside a company with tens of thousands of staff.
How should a company set its values?
Together, with the team, not handed down by the boss. That's how the consultants we worked with did it, and they said small, new companies find it easiest.
The boss doesn't write a list and give it to you. That rarely works, because you already have a core group of people, and the boss can't simply change them. The consultants did ask the boss what he wanted, of course. He pays the bills. But then they gathered all of us and we worked the values out as a group.
They also said something I found reassuring. If the team is very far from what the boss believes, the group won't hold together and the values won't take shape. Usually that isn't a problem, because a boss tends to hire people who think a bit like him.
Several different consultants repeated the same line: values are lived, not spoken. So they looked at how we behaved and at the products we made, and drew the values out of that. That was the easiest way.
How do big companies push their values?
Mostly from the top down, and that's harder. I only know this second-hand, but at larger companies a leadership team decides the values and then has to push them down through the layers. The people below don't always follow.
So the playbook looks like this. They talk about the values again and again. They put them on a web page. They reward the right attitude, so if you live the values, a pay rise comes more easily. And they try to hire people who already fit.
What does "culture fit" mean in hiring?
It means hiring people whose values already match yours. In Australia we love the phrase "culture fit". Even at our small company, after we had set our values, we still tried hard to hire people with the same culture. The thing we worried about most was bringing in someone whose culture was very different.
I wrote about a related idea in Why the Same Culture Doesn't Make You Friends. Shared background is one thing. Shared values are another.
Can you hire anyone and re-educate them later?
I don't think so, though I know people who do. I was chatting with an older friend about this. He isn't inside the organisation I have in mind, and I'll keep it vague, because it involves a real organisation and has nothing to do with my own workplace. But he believes in a different method.
His view is: "We've talked about our values. We've talked about lots of values." My reply was: the people you're hiring don't share those values, so talking won't change them.
If you put it in Christian terms, I can see where the other view comes from. Look at Peter and the other disciples. At the time they were timid. If Jesus had insisted on culture fit, it wouldn't have worked. He took all kinds of people and changed them, and that change came from God. If your plan depends on miracles like that, there's nothing more to argue. But my friend thinks an ordinary organisation can hire people first, then change them and re-educate them. In practice that's very hard.
What does choosing a school teach us about culture?
That you learn more from the students than from the website. Schools work the same way as companies. When we choose a school for our kids, the most important thing is what the students are like.
A friend of mine reads everything first: the school's website, its structure, its motto, its list of activities. That's fair enough, because the activities do reflect a school's culture. But he's a numbers person, and he mostly goes by what's written down.
Back when we were looking, a veteran agent told me you have to go and see the school in person. I like a school when I see its students are well behaved. That's their real value, whatever the brochure says.
Then look at the results. A school can say it offers whole-person education, but if its exam results are outstanding, it clearly puts academics first. Anything else it says is a waste of breath. If you're a parent thinking about this, my earlier essay Do Kids in Australia Not Need to Work Hard? looks at effort and choice from another side.
Is writing five values on a website enough?
No. My friend who talks about culture still thinks it is. His idea is: build a website, make everything look great, and that's our message to the outside. Set a few values, write those five values on the website, and you're done. Have a team meeting every week, all kinds of meetings, talk about it every day, and that's enough.
I told him: mate, the people below aren't following the people at the top at all.
Why do top-down values often fail in Asian workplaces?
Because of a habit many of us know well: "policy from above, workaround from below" (上有政策，下有對策). My friend is Asian too, which is why I really don't understand why he doesn't see it. In many Asian workplaces, people nod politely at what management says, then quietly do things their own way. If they don't agree with you, a slogan on the wall won't change that.
What actually builds a good culture?
Living it every day. Back then we were really passionate about culture. To me, culture is how you act when you turn up to work each morning, who you choose to hire, and how you practise your values day to day.
If work culture interests you, you might also like my piece on why Canva's 22% job cut drew little anger.
What's your workplace like? Are the values on the website, or in what people actually do? I'd really like to hear your story.
Based on my Cantonese voice note recorded in Brisbane in November 2026. This is a personal reflection, not research. The images were made locally with Qwen Image 2.1 for the video, and AI helped me edit the English.
