Values as a Mirror
Don't author values. Interview the whole team, harvest their exact words, and write them back as a story.
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 5
- Confidence
- 90%
Miller resisted company values for two years, experiencing them as corporate propaganda. The unlock was realizing values already existed in the team organically — so the job was archaeology, not authorship. They interviewed every single person one by one, pulled the recurring words out of those conversations, and published them not as five titles-and-subtitles on a careers page but as a narrative essay ('Notes on Road Trips') that carries the values inside a story.
Origin
Josh Miller's own process at The Browser Company, arrived at after roughly two years of pushback from experienced advisors asking 'Josh, where are your values?'. The essay itself was largely driven by a team member named Abby, not by Miller — he stresses it was not a CEO writing a missive in a corner.
Core principles
- 01Values you invent read as fortune-cookie propaganda. Values you observe read as truth because they already describe what is happening.
- 02The raw material is what people say when you ask them what's going well and what isn't — not a survey.
- 03Interview one by one. A survey flattens the exact phrasing you are hunting for.
- 04Almost every word of the final values should be a word someone on the team actually said. That is what makes it a mirror.
- 05The format is a value-carrier. A story invites reading; a bulleted careers page invites skimming and cynicism.
- 06This is itself an instance of 'assume you don't know' — Miller was certain values were not for them, and was wrong.
How to run it
- 1
Listen for the patterns first
Run natural one-year check-in conversations ('how's it going, what's going well, what's not') and notice the traits people keep naming about how the team works. Do not launch a values project until you can hear the repetition.
Pro tip Ask people why they love working here and what defines the way you work — the answers are the value candidates.
- 2
Interview every single person, one by one
Sit down with the entire team individually — explicitly not a survey — and ask questions until you have their language on record.
Watch out This is slow. The whole exercise took about three months, most of it in the writing.
- 3
Pull the words out verbatim
Extract the recurring phrases from the interviews and build the value set from them, aiming for every value to be something a team member actually said. At The Browser Company the harvest produced 'show up with heartfelt intensity', 'assume you don't know (so we've got to get going)', 'start by asking what could be', 'you're on the hook for the team', and 'make them feel something'.
Pro tip Sanity-test each candidate value against a compliment an outsider paid you: if someone says 'you ship fast', you should be able to trace it one-to-one to a value.
- 4
Publish them inside a story, not a grid
Find the metaphor that the team's own description already resembles, and write the values into it. Miller noticed everything people described sounded like how he takes a road trip, so the team wrote 'Notes on Road Trips' — a semi-biographical, mostly fictional essay about a teenager and their father on a road trip.
Pro tip Assign the writing to whoever on the team actually has the craft for it. Abby carried the project; the CEO's name appears somewhere on the page.
Watch out The narrative format is where the time goes. Budget for it rather than being surprised.
- 5
Ship the values by hiring for them
Use the harvested values as the actual hiring filter — Miller's first and most important is people who show up with heartfelt intensity, some fire in the belly and something to prove. Then give them an ambitious promise and get out of the way.
Pro tip 'We obsess over the details' is the generic version. 'Heartfelt intensity' allows each person's fire to be different — UI craft for one, 2x performance on a quarter of the headcount for another.
In the wild
After two years of refusing to write values, Miller ran team-wide one-on-one interviews, extracted the recurring language, and — noticing the descriptions echoed how he takes road trips — had the team write a semi-fictional essay about a road trip that carries the values inside the narrative rather than listing them.
→ A published values essay Miller is proud of, built almost entirely from team members' own words, that Lenny describes on air as 'quite beautiful'. Total time: about three months.
When Scott Belsky's compliment ('you ship meaningful features every Friday and close the loop with customers') came back to Miller, he traced it directly to the values: heartfelt intensity supplies the drive, 'assume you don't know, so get going' produces a default to action, and 'start by asking what could be' raises the ambition.
→ The values function as an explanatory model of the company's behaviour rather than as wall decoration — Miller can map an outside compliment one-to-one onto them.
Common mistakes
Writing the values yourself
A CEO drafting values in a corner produces exactly the corporate propaganda Miller spent two years rejecting. The legitimacy comes from the words being demonstrably the team's own.
Using a survey instead of interviews
Miller specifically calls out 'one by one, but no survey'. Surveys return sanitized, pre-chewed phrasing; you lose the idiosyncratic language that makes the mirror recognizable.
Running the exercise too early
There has to be something to observe. The Browser Company only found its values a year and a half to two years in, when the same traits had been said back to them enough times to be undeniable.
Is it for you?
Best for
Founders 18+ months in with a team that already has a distinct working culture, who instinctively distrust corporate values pages.
Not ideal for
Brand-new teams with no observable behaviour yet, or organizations that need values imposed to correct a culture rather than described to reflect one.
From the transcript
“I just kept hearing the same things from the team and you know I would do things like a year into someone joining how's it…”
“then we actually very uh comprehensively we're like okay let's sit down and interview everyone at the browser company one one but no survey one…”
“let's tell let's write a manual for how to take a road trip so we wrote an essay called notes on road trips that use…”
From the episode
Competing with giants: An inside look at how The Browser Company builds product
Josh Miller (CEO)