I want to approach the issue of values by focusing on a set of organizations that strive to be high reliability organizations (HRO). Organizations such as nuclear power-generation plants, naval aircraft carriers, wildland firefighting crews, and emergency departments in hospitals aspire to produce high reliability performance under trying conditions with fewer than their fair share of accidents. Usually their aspirations succeed; occasionally they fail. For our purpose what is important is that the fate of these organizations often can be traced to the strength of their attachment to values or general principles concerning patterns of behavior that they hold in high regard. But what is crucial to this strength of attachment is the way in which it was achieved. In organizing for high reliability, values are the last thing to be crystallized, not the first. And it is this departure from conventional treatments of value driven behavior that has the potential to help us understand the mechanisms by which values-based leadership gains its legitimacy and effectiveness.