If you want to know what an organisation actually values, don’t look at what it says. Look at what it does.

Often, there’s a vast gap between the two.

I recently heard someone say that “values are aspirational”, and my instinctive reaction wasn’t good. Because in (too) many organisations, that is all values are: aspirations, proudly displayed on websites and walls, but not really lived.

Of course, no organisation is going to proclaim that it values mediocrity and imitation (even though those adjectives could describe many businesses). And very few organisations will overtly say they value ruthlessness, personal sacrifice and profit above all else, even if it’s a true portrayal of how they behave, because as articulated values – the kind that often sit with visions and mission statements – they aren’t sexy or socially acceptable or inspiring. Which, of course, explains why articulated values usually are aspirational.

Now there’s nothing wrong with making your values aspirational. As individuals, most of us want to better ourselves; businesses should, too. The problem is that aspirational values are often window-dressings, which betray what’s really going on. Organisations with these kinds of beautiful-but-fake values don’t do what they say, and they don’t say what they do.

While some businesses fall short of their aspirational values because they don’t believe in them strongly enough, there are organisations that do believe in their aspirations, but still fall short. And usually that’s because they don’t try hard enough. Or they don’t realise how much work it takes.

Articulating organisational values is the easy part. The hard work is trying to close the gap between who you actually are and who you aspire to be. It’s hard work because it has to be done over and over again, in myriad different ways, every day. It’s hard work because it needs to be built in to how you make your decisions and how you design your processes. And it’s hard work because it’s never finished.

The rewards, though, are worth it. When your actual behaviours come close to expressing your aspirational ones, you tend to be better at attracting and keeping the kind of people you want, your team tends to be more cohesive and your decisions more consistent.

By all means, aspire, and aspire high. Just not pie-in-the-sky high.