Last week as the summer sun shone, I attended the funeral of a good hometown friend- Steve.  He was 52. Too young, too fast, too full-on. Steve lived like he played his northern soul music — loud, messy mixes, with more soul than structure. The kind of guy who’d light up a room with a grin and then disappear for three days. The kind of mate who’d fight for you regardless of the odds but never remember a birthday.  He shouldn’t be gone. But he did die. And that makes you think. Not just about mortality — though there’s that sobering reflection of memento mori — but about the difference between how we say we live and how we actually live. Between values and behaviours. Between what we think we ‘value’ and what we practice.

The myth of values

We all know the script. Companies publish their “values” like modern-day commandments: Integrity. Accountability. Innovation. Courage. Etched into office walls, laminated into our HR handbooks, recited at board away days along with bad coffee and worse power point.

My friend Steve? He never talked about values and if he had they would have been washed out in a moments by action. He just was. He stood up his behaviours which were always one step ahead of values. Reckless. Loyal. Curious. Disobedient. He didn’t claim authenticity; he embodied it. You always knew where you stood with him — often somewhere between admiration and exasperation. In contrast, how often do we see organisations say one thing and do another?

“People first” — until the quarterly numbers wobble. “Transparency” — until the scandal breaks. “Agility” — until someone suggests a new idea. The truth is, in both life and leadership, behaviour is the real culture. It will bury values every time. What you do when no one’s watching. What decisions you make under pressure. How you show up when it’s hard. That’s who you are. And that’s who your business is. Are values now irrelevant in their neat bundles?  

Legacy isn’t a statement — It’s a pattern

My mate left behind no mission statement. He left behind moments — chaotic, hilarious, profound. His life was a messy collage of behaviour: helping and having fun with friends, occasionally burning bridges, living hard, meeting his struggles head on as if there were no other option, loving family- people will remember that fondly.

Which raises the question for business: What will your people remember when you’re gone? Not what your brand said. But how you made them feel. Not your values page. But your daily actions. Culture isn’t what’s framed. It’s what’s tolerated, celebrated, and repeated. This can be a bit messier if we allow it to. We’ll be better and more human for it.

Business needs a little more rock ‘n’ roll?

I don’t suggest running your business like an “all nighter” northern soul party. That path ends faster than it should. But I do suggest we stop pretending that polished values matter more than gritty behaviours. You want loyalty? Live it. You want courage? Reward it and let people fight for it. You want innovation? Make space for risk and recoveries. We need the sense of edge, the room for mess, the creative, the wild.

The most admired leaders I know don’t have the slickest slogans. They have consistency, fierceness, humanity, and acceptably rough edges. They make hard decisions aligned to real principles. They hold the line when it counts. In my view that’s what builds legacy. That’s what earns trust.

The final dance

As the last rave piano chords rang out at my friend’s service — his inappropriately favourite dance tune blaring over cheap church speakers — I thought: He wasn’t perfect. But he wasn’t fake. He was a bit wild. He was my friend and I will remember him well for that.

And there’s the lesson for me. The dance eventually ends. What matters is not what you claimed you stood for, but how you actually stood. Not what you wrote, but what you risked. Not what you said, but what you did. So maybe it’s time we stop asking, “What are our values?” And start asking, “What are our habits?” Because in the end, it’s not the posters on the wall. It’s the things we did, the noise we made, the energy and edge we bring. And who showed up when it mattered.

Stuart Rimmer is the Founder of Inner Mountain Advisory, Deputy CEO at Thames Freeport and Visiting Associate Professor at BPP University. He is the author of ‘A Stoic Reckoning: Why Stoicism is True’ available on Amazon

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