The Core Values Con Job: Why Your Core Values Aren't Earning Their Keep 

Facilitated by Brett Hoogeveen, BetterCulture

Core values are everywhere – on websites, walls, and welcome packets. Yet in most organizations, values aren’t actually driving culture improvement; they’re simply describing what matters. They sound meaningful, but they’re rarely used as a system to help people get better at the behaviors those values are meant to represent. That’s the core values con job: values that look important, but rarely change how work gets done.

Consider this simple test most organizations struggle to answer: Are your people living your values more consistently today than they were three years ago? If not, the problem isn’t the values themselves – it’s that they’re being treated as statements of belief rather than tools for improvement.

This guided working session introduces a practical way to use your existing core values as a system for improving employee behavior and performance over time. Participants will apply this thinking directly to their own values and explore how a Values Performance System™ helps organizations move beyond pass/fail values toward measurable, sustained improvement – without rewriting or refreshing their values.

Using BetterCulture’s Values Performance System™ framework, attendees will learn how to:

• Translate values into observable behaviors
• Replace pass/fail thinking with progression
• Provide tools for development that support improvement
• Recognize and reinforce improvement over time
• Integrate values into everyday leadership and performance conversations

If you’re ready to move beyond posters, plaques, and good intentions, this session will show how to turn core values into a working system for culture improvement — one that creates visible progress, not just shared language. Because if behavior isn’t improving, values aren’t working.

After participating in this session, attendees will be able to:

1. Assess whether their organization’s core values are functioning as a system for behavior improvement, rather than simply serving as statements of intent.
2. Translate existing core values into clear, observable behaviors that can be discussed, reflected on, and improved over time.

Apply a progression-based mindset to values, moving away from pass/fail or judgment-based interpretations.

Speaker/Facilitator: Brett Hoogeveen, BetterCulture.

Brett Hoogeveen is on a mission to make the world a better place to work! He is the co-founder of BetterCulture, a prominent leadership development and technology firm with clients from entrepreneurial startups to Fortune 500 companies.  A former healthcare executive, engineer, startup investor, and host of The BetterCulture Podcast, Brett helps organizations build stronger leaders and engage every employee.

Brett travels nationally as a Certified Professional Speaker (CSP) and consultant with a single focus: providing practical, actionable advice to help organizations build dominantly successful cultures. As Brett and his growing list of clients are keenly aware, a better culture means a better business!