(The following post was originally written by Sam Cicotello, head of The Motley Fool’s member services team)

Wow!  You actually opened a post with the title “core values?”  I’m a little surprised.  Many people look at “core values” and roll their eyes.  After all, most companies have them and they are generally very nice, very aspirational…and very stale.

You can imagine that they were created by a strange consultant with trendy glasses, who smelled like Mountain Dew and Altoids, who came to the office and spent a day in a conference room – or maybe a result of that executive retreat a few years ago where we all heard Alex got a little tipsy and crashed the golf cart.

But, so what? What do they really mean when push comes to shove?  How do you use them?

At their worst, Core Values are corporate jargon and a company joke – Enron, after all, had values of respect, integrity, communication, and excellence.

But used in the right way, they can be amazing – dare I say magical!  They can allow a company to develop a culture that exists without a lot of oversight.

At The Fool we really do try to live our core values every single day.  And they’re a little different than your typical corporate buzz words.  Here they are – created by a broad section of Fools from several departments and tenures.

You can see them on the wall as soon as you walk through the front door on our culture tour. But they don’t live there – they live in our culture and in each Fool’s daily actions.

Be Foolish!

• Collaborative – Do great things together.
• Innovative – Search for a better solution. Then top it!
• Fun – Revel in your work.
• Honest – Make us proud.
• Competitive – Play fair, play hard, play to win.
• Motley – Make Foolishness your own. Share your core value _____________.

Okay, great – but how do you know you are living them?  What about the pushing and shoving I mentioned earlier? For me it’s about these four questions, and I ask myself these questions frequently for each value:

1. Do we hire for this value?
2. Will we fire for this value?
3. Can you see and feel this value walking through the office?
4. Is the value referenced frequently?  Really? When was the last time?

For each of our core values, I want us to be able to answer “YES!” to each of these questions. Ask these questions about the values at your organization. I think they’ll shed some light on whether your company’s values are reflective of the company’s culture.

Fool on!