Vitr Pathways

Whitepaper · Oct 2025 · 12 pages

Why 62% of your employees can't name your values

A practitioner's framework for writing purpose, vision and values that hold under pressure, drawn from work inside real leadership teams.

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Summary

We once worked with a company whose foyer proclaimed "Everyone deserves a voice." Inside, bullying was rife and people were afraid to speak in meetings. The CEO knew the value wasn't lived. So did everyone else. That gap between the stated culture and the real one was costing them revenue, and it is the most common culture problem we see in senior teams.

This whitepaper is the framework we use to close it. Purpose-led firms show 30% higher innovation, 83% of revenue outperformers link daily work to purpose, and engaged employees are 87% more likely to stay. Yet only 38% of employees can recall their company's values. This paper is about getting you on the right side of those numbers.

What's inside

  • The one-question test that exposes whether a value is core or merely aspirational (hint: it involves your star performer).
  • Three thought experiments for finding your real purpose, including one we call the Corporate Serial Killer.
  • Why only 38% of employees can recall their company's values, and how to write ones people actually use.
  • How Atlassian operationalised their values, and how Enron's four values accelerated its collapse.
  • A diagnostic for mapping the culture you have against the culture your strategy needs.

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