Building Values That Actually Guide Decisions
The three values we established during our first offsite in Calistoga became the framework that shaped every significant decision we made afterward. Fearless Innovation, Aligned Agency, and Human Connection were not aspirational statements we hoped to grow into. They were operational principles we needed immediately.
I had participated in enough values exercises to know most organizations treat them as wall art. The typical process produces generic statements that sound impressive but offer no practical guidance when you need to choose between competing priorities. What made our Calistoga session different was the constraint we placed on ourselves from the beginning. These values had to be specific enough to eliminate options, not broad enough to justify everything.
Fearless Innovation as a Filter
Fearless Innovation became our most demanding standard. The word "fearless" was deliberate. We were not interested in innovation that felt safe or incremental. This value forced us to examine every project through a specific lens. If a proposal did not require us to learn something we had never done before, it failed the test.
This created immediate tension with practical concerns about timeline and budget. Fearless Innovation meant accepting that some efforts would fail completely. It meant choosing approaches that had higher technical risk but offered the possibility of breakthrough results. The value gave us permission to pursue solutions that made our advisors nervous.
The filtering effect was more useful than I expected. When team members presented options that represented minor improvements over existing approaches, the conversation ended quickly. Everyone understood that incremental progress, while valuable, was not what we were optimizing for. This clarity eliminated hours of debate about projects that would have consumed resources without advancing our core mission.
Aligned Agency in Practice
Aligned Agency addressed the coordination problem that destroys most collaborative efforts. We defined it as the ability to act independently while maintaining coherence with shared objectives. This was not about consensus or unanimous agreement. It was about creating conditions where individuals could make decisions without constant consultation while ensuring those decisions supported the larger effort.
The practical implementation required more structure than the concept suggested. We established clear boundaries around decision-making authority and created regular checkpoints to surface conflicts before they became critical. The value helped us distinguish between decisions that required group input and those that individuals could make autonomously.
What surprised me was how much energy this freed up. When people understand the parameters within which they can operate independently, they stop asking permission for routine choices. The quality of our collective decision-making improved because we reserved group discussions for questions that genuinely required multiple perspectives.
Human Connection as Operational Requirement
Human Connection was the value that required the most translation from concept to practice. We were not building a social organization. We were building something that needed to function effectively under pressure while maintaining the relationships that made collaboration possible.
This meant designing processes that acknowledged the human cost of difficult decisions. When we had to change direction quickly or abandon work that people had invested significant effort in, Human Connection required us to address the impact on individuals, not just the strategic implications. This was not sentiment. It was recognition that sustainable performance depends on trust, and trust requires acknowledging when decisions create personal difficulty for team members.
The value also influenced how we structured feedback and evaluation processes. Instead of optimizing purely for efficiency, we built in time for people to understand not just what they needed to change, but why those changes mattered to the larger effort. This took longer than streamlined approaches, but it produced more durable improvements.
The Calistoga Context
The offsite location mattered more than I initially realized. Removing ourselves from our normal environment created space for conversations that would not have happened in our usual meeting rooms. The physical distance from daily operational concerns allowed us to focus on questions about identity and direction without the pressure of immediate decisions.
The process took longer than scheduled. We had planned to finalize our values in a single session, but the discussion extended into the evening and continued the next morning. This was not inefficiency. The additional time allowed us to test each proposed value against specific scenarios we had recently encountered. By the end of the process, we could predict how each value would influence future decisions.
Testing Under Pressure
The real validation came when we faced decisions that required choosing between competing values. Fearless Innovation sometimes conflicted with Human Connection when pursuing breakthrough solutions required asking people to work in ways that increased personal stress. Aligned Agency occasionally conflicted with Fearless Innovation when independent decision-making led to safe choices rather than ambitious ones.
These conflicts were not problems to solve but tensions to manage. The values gave us a framework for discussing tradeoffs explicitly rather than making compromises that satisfied no one. When we had to choose, we could explain our reasoning in terms that everyone understood, even when people disagreed with the specific decision.
Durability Over Time
The values established in Calistoga have remained stable through changes in team composition, market conditions, and strategic direction. This consistency was not automatic. It required regular examination of whether our stated values matched our actual decision-making patterns. When we found gaps, we had to choose between changing our behavior or acknowledging that our stated values were not accurate.
The process of maintaining alignment between values and actions proved more demanding than creating the initial framework. It required ongoing attention to ensure that new team members understood not just what the values meant in theory, but how they influenced daily operations. This was particularly important when bringing in people who had succeeded in environments with different value systems.
Practical Limitations
These values did not solve every coordination problem or eliminate every difficult conversation. They provided a shared reference point for discussions, but they did not make complex decisions simple. Some situations required extended debate regardless of how clear our values were.
The values also created new forms of accountability that not everyone found comfortable. When decisions clearly violated one of our established principles, there was no ambiguity about the failure. This transparency improved our collective performance, but it also meant that mistakes became more visible and harder to rationalize.
Working within this framework required more discipline than operating without explicit values. Every significant choice had to be examined against three different criteria, which sometimes slowed our response to urgent situations. We accepted this constraint because the alternative; making decisions without clear principles produced inconsistent results that were harder to evaluate and improve.
The work we did in Calistoga continues to influence how we approach new challenges. The specific values we established may not transfer to other organizations, but the process of creating operational principles that actually guide decisions remains essential for any group that needs to coordinate complex efforts effectively.
About the Author
Josh Roten is the Head of Marketing at GTM Engine. He and his team are building a brand and growth strategy centered on personalization at scale. Revenue teams don’t care about flashy messaging, they care about what actually works. That’s why clearly communicating GTM Engine’s core offering, and how it drives real results, is so important. Josh’s career has always lived at the crossroads of revenue strategy and storytelling. He’s built a reputation for turning messy data into clear marketing insights that fuel smart strategy. At GTM Engine, he’s putting that experience to work, helping shape a narrative that connects. He believes the future of go-to-market (GTM) isn’t about piling on more tools, it’s about finding better signals. After all, great marketing should feel like it was made just for you.
