They need to be more than posters on your walls.
Values can be defined as broad preferences concerning appropriate courses of actions or outcomes. Value systems are proscriptive and prescriptive beliefs and are the basis of intentional activities.
When an organization proclaims their set of values they are building the framework for every decision moving forward, from the broadest and most strategic to the most detailed and tactical.
If you imagine your journey as a person, a team, a department, or an organization as a trek through a vast forest you can imagine that your goal is to get to the clear fields on the other side. Along your path through the forest, there’ll be many forks in the road. Sometimes you’ll make a choice between two paths, sometimes between many paths. How do you know which to take? Each and every journey is unique, so no map can help. What you do have are the stars in the sky. Your values are those stars. When you’re at that fork, you follow the path that’s lit by those stars.
When you have two candidates who are both very qualified, who do you hire?
When you have limited resources but two initiatives that both look like they’ll bring your organization to the next level, which do you pick?
When you’re deciding what’s best for your organization as you navigate COVID-19, what do you do?
The answer is always the same. You follow-through with the one that embodies your values the most.
Otherwise, why are they even important enough to be a value.