What You Do Is Who You Are: How to Create Your Business Culture

by Ben Horowitz

Imagine you’re a manager. Your company has the cultural value “We have each other’s backs,” meaning that you support one another when the chips are down. Now, imagine that one of your distribution partners is attempting to close a large deal and calls on one of your people for help, but your employee is busy and drops the ball—no show, no call, no help. The partner, furious at losing the deal through lack of support, calls you to vent. Do you have your employee’s back or your partner’s back? Is your allegiance to the culture or to the tribe? If your allegiance is to the tribe, which is the more instinctive call, keep in mind that the idea behind supporting one another when the chips are down is to foster trust and loyalty throughout the company. It’s nearly impossible for a company to be able to maintain one set of ethics with partners and an entirely different set in-house. If you support the employee, he will learn two lessons: 1) you have his back, and 2) dropping the ball is totally acceptable. The way you treat that partner will eventually be the way your employees treat each other. As Senghor points out, culture travels.