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

by Ben Horowitz

felicitous

extirpate

mercurial

Genghis created a remarkably stable culture by founding it on three principles: meritocracy, loyalty, and inclusion.

obeisance,

congeries

trebuchet

concubines

“Don’t turn down anything except your collar.”

Good intentions, pursued without meticulous forethought and follow-through, often lead to catastrophe.

For your culture to be vibrant and sustainable, it must come from the blood, from the soul.

Step one in designing a successful culture is to be yourself. That’s not so easy.

This interview revealed a key to leadership: you must be yourself.

If you aren’t yourself, even you won’t follow you.

If you follow the first rule of leadership, not everybody will like you. But trying to get everybody to like you makes things even worse.

discursiveness—which

It is much easier to walk the talk when the talk is your natural chatter.

A company’s culture needs to reflect the leader’s sensibilities.

“Culture eats strategy for breakfast.”

Screw what the executive suite says, what matters is what the people are doing.

virtues must be based on actions rather than beliefs.

978-0-06-287134-3