Your shoulder brushes against the cool, frosted glass of the conference room. Etched into its surface, in a sans-serif font that cost more than your first car, is the word INNOVATION. You’re walking into a meeting where, for the third time this year, your team’s software budget is being cut by 19 percent, and you’re expected to thank management for the ‘opportunity to get creative with resources.’ The chill from the glass isn’t just temperature; it’s the cold, hard reality of the canyon between the words on the wall and the decisions made within them.

These corporate value statements are not for the employees. We figured that out a long time ago. They are artifacts for the benefit of recruiters, investors, and clients who visit the lobby. They are corporate taxidermy-the preserved, mounted corpse of a noble idea the company shot and killed years ago. ‘Integrity.’ ‘Transparency.’ ‘Community.’ The bigger the font, the more hollow the echo.

I once made the mistake of believing them. I was 29, working for a logistics firm whose central, most-shouted value was ‘Ownership.’ We were all ‘owners’ of our work. It was in every email signature, on every lanyard. I took it to heart. When I saw a massive inefficiency in our routing system-a flaw that was costing us an estimated $979,000 annually-I spent 99 hours of my own time building a comprehensive solution. I documented everything, created a 39-page proposal, and presented it with the earnest belief of a true owner. The response? A polite but firm ‘Thank you for your passion, but please stay in your lane. We have a dedicated team for that.’ That team, I would later learn, consisted of one person who had been on vacation for the past 9 weeks.

I’m pretty sure I’m not alone in this. I keep thinking about a man I met years ago, Cameron S.K., an industrial hygienist for a massive manufacturing plant. Cameron was one of those people who saw the world in parts-per-million and decibel levels. His job was to keep people from being poisoned, deafened, or crushed. He was meticulous, quiet, and carried the weight of 2,399 employees’ physical safety on his shoulders. The company he worked for had just launched a massive internal campaign around a new core value: ‘Trust is Our Bedrock.’ It was on posters in the breakroom, showing smiling employees high-fiving each other over gleaming machinery.

Cameron told me this over a plate of terrible convention-center chicken. He said that same week, he was tasked with signing off on a new capital expenditure. Management wanted to install a new surveillance system across the entire factory floor. Not in the loading bays or parking lots where theft might be a concern, but directly over the assembly lines. The justification in the report, which he showed me, was ‘Proactive Safety Monitoring.’ He said the existing safety protocols were sound; the problem was that supervisors weren’t enforcing them. The real, unspoken reason for the cameras was to monitor unauthorized breaks and measure workstation efficiency down to the second.

He was looking at a purchase order for 49 new poe cameras, each capable of capturing high-definition video that could read the brand name on a candy bar wrapper from 59 feet away. He was supposed to approve this expenditure as a safety measure for a company that preached ‘Trust is Our Bedrock.’ He just shook his head, looking at his fork.

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“They want to trust everyone,” he said, “but they need to verify it 29 times a second in 4K.” The gap between the poster and the purchase order was the entire story. It was a joke, and every single person working on that line was in on it.

The Slow, Creeping Corrosion of Language

The most dangerous part isn’t even the hypocrisy. It’s the slow, creeping corrosion of language itself. When ‘Innovation’ means budget cuts, and ‘Trust’ means surveillance, and ‘Integrity’ means laying off 9 percent of your staff with a two-sentence email, these words cease to have meaning. They become placeholders for their opposites. It’s a form of corporate gaslighting. You are told you are part of a ‘family’ while being treated like a disposable component. You are told to be ‘bold’ while being punished for stepping outside of a process document written in 1999. It trains you to stop believing not just the company’s words, but any words.

I often wonder why they even bother. Is there a single human being on earth who was convinced to accept a job offer because the lobby wall said ‘PASSION’? Maybe there is. Maybe that’s the a new hire’s first filter: you have to be naive enough to believe the marketing before you’re allowed in the door. It’s a strange thought, that the most valued plaques on the wall are essentially a screen for people who haven’t yet been disillusioned.

Sometimes I try to argue the other side, just to see if it holds water. I’ll tell myself that they’re not statements of fact, they’re aspirations. They are the North Star the company is steering towards, even if the ship is currently taking on water in a swamp. It’s a nice idea. It’s also nonsense. An aspiration requires demonstrable effort. If your aspiration is to run a marathon, you don’t spend all day on the couch eating chips and just taping a picture of a finish line to your TV. You buy running shoes. You go for a jog. You time yourself. You improve. But companies will keep the ‘Integrity’ poster on the wall for decades while consistently making decisions that show none.

What Would a Company With Actual Values Look Like?

It probably wouldn’t have them on the wall. Its values would be evident in its actions. They’d be in the budget allocations. They’d be in the way people are promoted. They’d be in the products that get canceled because they don’t meet a quality standard, even if it means a quarterly loss. A company with real ‘Integrity’ wouldn’t need to say it; its employees would just know it when their manager defends their team from an unreasonable request, taking the heat themselves. A company that truly valued ‘Innovation’ would have a line item in the budget called ‘Well-Intentioned Failures.’ You wouldn’t need a poster. You’d just see it happening. The evidence wouldn’t be etched in glass; it would be in the daily experience of the 499 people who work there.