Core values are the foundational principles that guide a company's behavior, decision-making, and cultural norms, ideally specific enough to inform actual decisions. The best ones look like "we deploy on Fridays" rather than "we value excellence," and they get used as criteria in hiring, performance reviews, conflict resolution, and strategic choices. Most companies state generic values (integrity, excellence, customer-focus, teamwork) that sound good but mean nothing in practice because every company claims them. The rare companies with useful core values state specific, sometimes uncomfortable, controversial principles that genuinely differentiate how they operate. It is one of the most-discussed and least-useful elements of c...