What You Do Is Who You Are: An expert guide to building your company’s culture

by Ben Horowitz

The Heretic Every company needs lots of smart, super-engaged employees who can identify its particular weaknesses and help it improve them. But some employees look for faults not so they can fix them, but so they can build a case. Specifically, a case that the company is hopeless and run by a bunch of morons. The smarter the employee, the more destructive this type of behavior can be—because people are that much more likely to listen to him. He will convince engaged, productive employees to become disengaged and to rally others to do the same. They will question every management decision, break trust, and cause your culture to disintegrate. Why would a smart person try to destroy the company he works for? He is disempowered. He feels he can’t access the people in charge, so complaining is his only way to get the truth out. He is fundamentally a rebel. Sometimes these people actually make better CEOs than employees. He is immature and naive. He cannot comprehend that the people running the company do not know every minute detail of its operations. He therefore believes they are complicit in everything that’s broken. It’s very difficult to turn heretics around. Once a heretic takes a public stance, the social pressure to be consistent is enormous. If he tells fifty friends that the CEO is the stupidest person on the planet, reversing that position will cost him enormous credibility. Most people aren’t willing to take the credibility hit.