Viral Sticky Language
If values are the language of accountability, give people language worth speaking.
- Difficulty
- Easy
- Time to result
- ~weeks to results
- Steps
- 4
- Confidence
- 90%
Darius argues that if core values are the language of accountability, then the language itself is the load-bearing part. He replaces abstract value words with short, sticky handles that carry a description of what living the value looks like. His own six personal values demonstrate the technique: happiness becomes 'heart', love becomes 'besos', passion becomes 'eye of the tiger', curiosity becomes 'cinco' (what, where, who, when, why), creativity becomes 'boom', and balance becomes 'movie night'. The reasoning is that branding uses sticky language for a reason, and values deserve the same treatment. Boring words like integrity or excellence tell no one what makes your excellence different from the company down the street.
Origin
Darius developed the technique while experimenting with how to make values actually stick during the five years his mortgage business was struggling. He applied it to himself in February 2019 in the Stagen Integral Leadership program — realizing that despite being the 'core value king' writing a book on the subject that very month, he had never done his own personal values.
Core principles
- 01Words matter — empires have been built and fallen on words.
- 02Generic value words like integrity or excellence are indistinguishable across companies.
- 03A value needs a memorable handle plus a description of what living it looks like.
- 04Shared insider language is what bonds a community.
- 05If it's going to be the language of accountability, give people language to work with.
How to run it
- 1
Start from the honest abstract value
Name the underlying value plainly first — happiness, love, passion, curiosity, creativity, balance — so the handle you invent later has something true underneath it.
Pro tip Values can be slightly aspirational. Darius names happiness and balance as the two he has to fight for.
- 2
Invent the sticky handle
Replace or pair the abstract word with a short, vivid, memorable phrase that carries the same meaning: heart, besos, eye of the tiger, cinco, boom, movie night.
Pro tip An acronym can do double duty — 'cinco' encodes the five questions what, where, who, when, why.
Watch out Don't pick a warm, pretty handle for a value your organization enforces harshly. The handle must connote the real behavior — Uber's 'toe stepping' was honest about what it meant.
- 3
Attach a description of what it looks like
For each handle, write out what living it actually looks like for you, your family, or your organization, so the phrase carries behavior and not just vibe.
Watch out Without the description, a catchy phrase becomes a slogan people can't act on.
- 4
Use it as shared insider language
Put the handles into everyday circulation so the team has common vocabulary only they fully understand — that shared language is what creates bonding and makes accountability conversations easy.
In the wild
Rather than list happiness, love, passion, curiosity, creativity and balance, Darius labelled them heart, besos, eye of the tiger, cinco, boom and movie night — each with a description of what it looks like for him and his family.
→ He measures himself against them continuously, using friction as his signal for which value he isn't currently living.
Uber's seventh core value under Travis Kalanick was 'toe stepping' — language that made zero pretense of niceness and told anyone joining exactly what the environment was.
→ Darius cites it as design-perfect sticky language and honest self-description, even while noting the toxic culture that grew around it — it scaled until it didn't.
Common mistakes
Defaulting to integrity, driven, or excellence
Everyone lists these. They give the team no distinguishing meaning — what's the difference between your excellence and the guy's down the street? — and no language to hold each other accountable with.
Making the language nicer than the reality
If the handle connotes softness but the organization steps on toes, the mismatch pulls in people who will hit friction immediately and leave.
Is it for you?
Best for
Anyone naming values, principles, or rituals that need to spread through a team or family by word of mouth.
Not ideal for
Contexts where regulatory or legal precision in wording matters more than memorability.
From the transcript
“I like to think of sticky viral language to describe a value and there's a description of what that looks like for me and for…”
“If you believe that core value is the language of accountability, then the language matters. Words matter, right? Like literally empires have grown and fallen…”
“Or you could be like everyone else and pick boring words like integrity... what's the difference between Yap's excellence and the guy down the street?”
From the episode
Darius Mirshahzadeh: The Core Value Equation
Darius Mirshahzadeh