Values Must Be Disagreeable and Cost Something
A useful value is one a good company could reasonably reject, and requires a tradeoff
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 4
- Confidence
- 85%
Zuckerberg treats values as a company's cultural operating system and applies two tests. First, a value is only useful if a good company could legitimately disagree with it; 'be honest' fails because every good company demands honesty, so writing it down signals something already went wrong. Second, a real value requires giving something up: 'move fast and break things' explicitly traded some software defects for iteration speed. When the bug cost grew too high, they evolved it to 'move fast with stable infrastructure', a new tradeoff. He limits the set to five or six because you can only optimise a few dimensions, quoting the idea that every organisation sucks but you choose how. Crucially, each value is coupled to an operational effort, or it is just words on a website.
Origin
Articulated when Zuckerberg's company, then nearing 100,000 people, rolled out six revised values as its cultural operating system.
Core principles
- 01Values are the cultural operating system for how work gets done
- 02A value is only useful if a good company could legitimately disagree with it
- 03To earn a value you must give something up in exchange
- 04Each value must be backed by real operational work, not just words
How to run it
- 1
Filter for disagreeability
Discard any candidate value that no good company could reasonably reject, such as 'be honest'.
Pro tip If you feel bad even needing to write it down, it is not a useful value.
- 2
Name the tradeoff
For each value, state explicitly what you are willing to give up to get it.
Pro tip Move fast traded tolerance for bugs; make the exchange concrete.
Watch out A value with no cost attached shapes no behaviour.
- 3
Limit the set
Keep only five or six values, because you can only truly optimise a few dimensions.
- 4
Operationalise each
Back every value with a real workstream, decision, or process change.
Pro tip Tie 'live in the future' to concrete rules like weekly VR meetings.
Watch out Values not backed by operational work are just words on a website.
In the wild
The value 'move fast and break things' explicitly traded some software defects for iteration speed. As the company scaled, the bug burden slowed things down more than speed helped, so it evolved to 'move fast with stable infrastructure', investing in abstractions that make the average engineer faster.
→ The value stayed behaviour-shaping by carrying an explicit, updated tradeoff rather than becoming a platitude.
Common mistakes
Writing anodyne values
Values everyone already agrees with, like honesty, shape no decisions because nobody would do otherwise.
Values without operational backing
A value with no coupled workstream or tradeoff is just marketing copy that changes no behaviour.
Is it for you?
Best for
Founders and leaders defining or revising a company's culture and values.
Not ideal for
Organisations wanting purely aspirational branding statements rather than behaviour-shaping tradeoffs.
From the transcript
“values are only useful if you can like legitimately disagree with them”
“good values, you need to be able to give something up in order to get them”
From the episode
#582: Mark Zuckerberg on Long-Term Strategy, Business and Parenting Principles, Personal Energy Management, Building the Metaverse, Seeking Awe, the Role of Religion, Solving Deep Technical Challenges (e.g., AR), and More