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

by Ben Horowitz

secular

indefatigable

bibli...

subsumed

Melanics

contrarian

indelibly

epigraphs

riffing

antecedents

The right answers for your company depend on what your company is, what it does, and what it wants to be.

Because your culture is how your company makes decisions when you’re not there. It’s the set of assumptions your employees use to resolve the problems they face every day. It’s how they behave when no one is looking. If you don’t methodically set your culture, then two-thirds of it will end up being accidental, and the rest will be a mistake.

Culture is not like a mission statement; you can’t just set it up and have it last forever. There’s a saying in the military that if you see something below standard and do nothing, then you’ve set a new standard. This is also true of culture—if you see something off-culture and ignore it, you’ve created a new culture.

vassals,

egalitarian

The samurai called their principles “virtues” rather than “values”; virtues are what you do, while values are merely what you believe.

Culture only works if the leader visibly participates in and vocally champions it.

How do you become the kind of leader that you yourself want to follow?

Culture isn’t a magical set of rules that makes everyone behave the way you’d like. It’s a system of behaviors that you hope most people will follow, most of the time.

There is no one ideal. A culture’s strengths may also be its weaknesses. And sometimes you have to break a core principle of your culture to survive. Culture is crucial, but if the company fails because you insist on cultural purity, you’re doing it wrong.

Because who you are is how people talk about you when you’re not around.

Who you are is not the values you list on the wall. It’s not what you say at an all-hands. It’s not your marketing campaign. It’s not even what you believe. It’s what you do. What you do is who you are.

abject

mulattoes

Laconic,

culture, not color, determined behavior.

brigand.

encomium

assiduously.

In any human interaction, the required amount of communication is inversely proportional to the level of trust.

On the other hand, if I don’t trust you in the slightest, then no amount of talking, explaining, or reasoning will have any effect on me, because I will never believe you are telling me the truth and acting in my best interests.

concubines.

When everyone wants to know “Why?” in an organization, the answer programs the culture, because it’s an answer everyone will remember.

If we can’t trust you to keep your word to your wife, we definitely can’t trust you to keep your word to us.”

A leader can transform a culture by bringing in leadership from a culture whose ways she wants to adapt.

Building a great culture means adapting it to circumstances. And that often means bringing in outside leadership from the culture you need to penetrate or master.

No culture can flourish without the enthusiastic participation of its leader.

One difficulty in implementing integrity is that it’s a concept without boundaries.

emigres,

abhorred:

vacillated.

retribution,

Toussaint Louverture made missteps that locked him up for life, yet he helped liberate us all.

If you are on time, you are late.

explicit

implicit

competence—expert

confidence

courage

convi...