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When your business evolves, your values should too
By
Ann Melinger
When was the last time you updated your company values? Too often, values are treated like marble pillars: immovable objects that, although they’re collecting dust, are impossible to deconstruct.
But organizations—their strategy, positioning, clients and expectations—evolve. They react, changing to move the business forward. So why don’t values move with them?
Over time, values that once made sense as guiding principles for behavior fall out of alignment with new business needs. Instead of steering the ship, these values send employees in the wrong direction, away from strategic action. This gap between your business and your values can create confusion or dilute your employees’ sense of purpose.
In 2026, bink is refreshing our company values. Here’s how we did it and why it matters for your organization right now.
TL;DR: Company values should evolve as your business evolves. Outdated values create confusion, slow decisions and dilute culture. Updating them requires honest evaluation, precise language and real-world pressure testing. These strategies showcase your value, simplify your workflows and empower your team to succeed in the face of uncertainty.
Why did we update our values?
Company values are behavioral standards that guide how your team makes decisions, works together, and shows up for customers. The best values create clarity under pressure and help teams act consistently without a script.
bink’s old values weren’t wrong, but they were written for an earlier version of the business.
The last time we updated our values was in 2020. Over the past five years, bink has changed in meaningful ways. We developed a new positioning with a sharper point of view. We rolled out a new brand that reflects clarity, confidence and rigor. And we’re operating as an evolved organization: how we work, how we partner and what clients expect of us has shifted to drive the business forward.
As our work became more focused and our perspective more defined, we realized our values needed to reflect who we are now, not who we were when we first wrote them.
How did we refresh our values?
In November 2025, our team came together for an in-person offsite, where we revisited the foundational components of our culture, including our vision, purpose and core values. While we felt confident that they didn’t need a full overhaul, we realized a lot of the existing language around our values didn’t resonate with who we are as an organization today.
Step 1: Assessing current values
What followed was a strategic values exercise—similar to the ones we use with our own clients—that began with a high-level discussion. We talked through questions like:
- When you look at these values and reflect on what we’ve discussed around our vision and purpose, is anything missing?
- Which value resonates most with you? How do you see this value alive in our work?
- How have our decisions reflected (or not reflected) our values?
- Are there any that feel outdated, misaligned or aspirational rather than real?
- Which value feels hardest to live right now? Why?
We took time to reflect on and answer these questions individually, then discussed them as a group. The process involved honest debate. Even with a small team, there’s bound to be disagreements when handling a nuanced topic. Don’t shy away from this; it’s how you create values that reflect both lived reality and collective ambition.
Step 2: Finding the gaps
Next, we dove deeper: exploring each individual value and the language associated with it. There were certain words and phrases that just didn’t feel right to us anymore (words like “cutting-edge” and “innovative,” for example).
After discussing which words and phrases resonated or not, and identifying what was missing, I made revisions independently. (Wordsmithing as a group can be tedious.) This gave the rest of the team time to think more deeply about our discussions. Values are a strategic pillar of your organization; don’t rush them.
Step 3: Pressure testing for real world application
From there, we refined the specific values language, pressure-testing it against real client moments and internal decisions. Our values aren’t designed to inspire—they’re designed to guide us in the day-to-day decisions we make at work. To make sure this was possible, we asked questions like:
- Does this reflect how we show up with clients?
- Does this hold up when the work is hard?
- Does this match our new positioning and brand promise?
Values that got a resounding “yes” from the team on all three became official. The ones that didn’t were tweaked until we got them right.
Further reading: How to refresh company core values
What we changed about our values (and what we didn’t)
We didn’t flip our values entirely on their heads. Just like our business, key elements stayed the same, while others evolved to reflect the new day-to-day experience of working at bink.
What stayed the same?
Humanity remains at the center of our values—it’s the force behind every interaction we have with each other and our clients.
Curiosity still drives how we approach complex organizations. We have years of experience and plenty of answers, but we know there’s no one-size-fits-all culture. We lead with curiosity to create solutions as nuanced as our clients’ organizations.
And respect for the employee experience remains non-negotiable. The role of culture is to empower employees. That will never change.
What evolved?
Our language has become more precise and direct. For example,
- “Lead the Way” became “Lead with Clarity” to reflect maturity, confidence and focus, not velocity.
- Our previous values said we aim to “help employees feel connected and inspired”. Our new values explicitly outline how we achieve that goal.
Our values now reflect how we actually lead and advise. They act as goalposts for our team and set expectations with our clients: clear, honest insights and meaningful, sustainable change.
The refreshed values are also a stronger articulation of bink’s role as guides for our clients, not commanders. We’re partners in culture, and our values now reflect our collaborative approach.
And perhaps most importantly, the collaborative process for refreshing our values helped everyone on the team feel more connected to them and apply them even more meaningfully in their day-to-day work.
Learn more: Discover our updated values
Values work is change work
What we experienced internally is exactly what we see with our clients. Strategy shifts, and culture must keep up.
Values work is a key element of change work. When your company evolves (like ours did), internal clarity must follow. Strategy docs, new brand guidelines, or a one-off town hall won’t cut it. You must reset expectations.
Sometimes you just need to tweak a few words. Other scenarios, like mergers, call for a more comprehensive overhaul.
But remember, this clarity isn’t just about finding the right words; it’s the key to aligning intent, behavior and decision-making for your employees.
Why evaluating your values matters right now
In 2026, evolving outdated values is essential for complex organizations navigating constant change, higher expectations and tighter margins for error.
When organizations grow, they don’t just get bigger; they get more complicated. And in industries like life sciences, where the work is highly specialized and the pressure to perform is constant, that complexity compounds quickly.
Values written for an earlier version of the business often sound fine on paper, but in practice, they slow teams down. Clear values do the opposite, enabling speed, trust and consistency—three things every organization needs more of right now. They make it easier for teams to move in the same direction, even when the work is complex, and the path isn’t obvious. They set expectations across functions and levels, so people don’t have to guess what “good” looks like.
When your values reflect the reality of how your business operates today, culture becomes a performance lever that reinforces alignment, strengthens execution and helps employees perform under pressure.
Your values should grow with your business
Revisiting your values isn’t a sign of instability. It’s a sign of clarity. Mature organizations know when to evolve with intention, and they grow stronger for it. With bink’s new values, our team can better serve our clients, coworkers and our mission.
If your business has changed meaningfully in the last few years, it might be worth asking whether your values have kept pace.
Want support facilitating a values reset? Get in contact with our team.
