Company Values Bingo: Culture Building Activities

Company values are usually announced with great fanfare and then slowly fade into the background. They live on coffee mugs, lobby walls, and the careers page. Company values bingo pulls them back out of the background and gives everyone a reason to look for them in the actual work.

How to Build Values-Driven Bingo Squares

The key is converting abstract values into specific, observable behaviors. Here's the pattern:

• Vague square: "Someone shows integrity" — hard to mark, means nothing
• Specific square: "Someone admits a mistake before anyone else noticed it" — clear, recognizable, markable

Sample Squares for Common Values

Integrity

• Someone delivers bad news without sugarcoating it
• A mistake gets acknowledged before anyone asked about it
• Someone says "I don't know" instead of guessing
• Disagreement is raised respectfully in a public forum

Customer Obsession

• Customer quote or story used in an internal discussion
• Decision explicitly made "because the customer said so"
• Someone advocates for the customer in a meeting about internal priorities
• Feature request traced back to direct customer feedback

Collaboration

• Someone asks for help instead of struggling alone
• Credit given publicly to someone who contributed quietly
• Two teams solve something together that neither could alone
• Someone shares information they didn't have to share

Innovation

• A wild idea gets taken seriously in a meeting
• Someone challenges a long-standing process with data
• An experiment is proposed instead of a definitive answer
• "We've always done it this way" gets challenged

Growth Mindset

• Someone asks for feedback on work they're proud of
• A failure is discussed openly as a learning opportunity
• Someone takes on a stretch project outside their comfort zone
• Team retrospective produces actual changes, not just observations

Running Values Bingo Across the Organization

Values bingo works best when run over an extended period — a quarter, not a single meeting. Players observe their colleagues over time and mark squares as they see real examples. This is fundamentally different from most bingo games: the goal is to help players notice values in action, not just consume content.

For workshops, run a values bingo review at the end of the quarter: which squares were easiest to fill? Which ones never got marked? Those gaps are your culture diagnostics.

The Values Bingo Anti-Patterns to Avoid

• Don't use value words as squares. "Integrity" is not a bingo square. What does integrity look like in a Tuesday meeting?
• Don't make it about individual people. Squares should be about observable moments, not about recognizing specific colleagues (that creates awkward nomination dynamics).
• Don't mandate participation. Values bingo as a required activity defeats itself. It works when people opt in because it's actually interesting.

Browse company culture bingo cards or build a custom values card tailored to your organization's specific principles.