Culture clearly has a powerful effect. So how do you shape it, how do you set it deep in people’s minds, and how do you fix it when it goes wrong?The right answer for your company depends on what your company is, what it does, and what it wants to be. 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.

The Effect Of Culture

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. Meanwhile, as business conditions shift and your strategy evolves, you have to keep changing your culture accordingly. The target is always moving. Culture isn’t a magical set of rules that makes everyone behave the way you’d like.

What Culture Is Not

All cultures are aspirational. No company ever achieved total cultural compliance or harmony.While you can draw inspiration from other cultures, don’t try to adopt another organization’s ways. For your culture to be vibrant and sustainable, it must come from the blood, from the soul. You cannot just copy and paste a culture you like.

Culture Is Always Relevant

Creating a culture is more complex than just trying to get your people to behave the way you want them to when no one is looking. Remember that your employees are far from uniform. They come from different countries, races, genders, backgrounds, even eras. Each one brings to your organization a different cultural point of departure. To get all of them to conform to and be reasonably happy with a common set of norms is a challenging puzzle.

Creating A Company Culture

Here are the rules for writing a rule so powerful it sets the culture for many years: <ul><li>It must be memorable. If people forget the rule, they forget the culture. </li><li>It must raise the question “Why?” Your rule should be so bizarre and shocking that everybody who hears it is compelled to ask, “Are you serious?” </li><li>Its cultural impact must be straightforward. The answer to the “Why?” must clearly explain the cultural concept. </li><li>People must encounter the rule almost daily. If your incredibly memorable rule applies only to situations people face once a year, it’s irrelevant</li></ul>

The Rules Of Writing A Rule

The Bushido code enabled the Samurai to rule Japan from 1186 until 1868—nearly seven hundred years—and their beliefs endured long after their reign.  Bushido looks like a set of principles, but it’s really a set of practices. It is a code of action, a system not of values but of virtues. A value is merely a belief, but virtue is a belief that you actively pursue or embody. The reason so many efforts to establish “corporate values” are basically worthless is that they emphasize beliefs instead of actions. What you believe means nearly nothing. What you do is who you are.

The Way Of The Warrior: Bushido 

Genghis created a remarkably stable culture by founding it on three principles: Meritocracy: Genghis abolished inherited aristocratic titles and eliminated the steppe tribes caste hierarchy. All men were equal. Loyalty: Genghis viewed loyalty as a bilateral relationship that gave him significant responsibilities.  Inclusion: Rather than treating conquered aristocratic leaders with special care and enslaving the rank and file, he executed the aristocrats and incorporated the soldiers into his army.

Genghis Khan: How He Conquered The East

The first step in getting the culture you want is knowing what you want.  With seemingly infinite possibilities to choose from, how do you design a culture that gives your organization the advantages it needs, creates an environment you are proud of, and most importantly, one that can actually be implemented.

Design Your Culture

Culture begins with deciding what you value most. Then you must help everyone in your organization practice behaviours that reflect those virtues. If the virtues prove ambitious or just plain counterproductive, you have to change them. When your culture turns out to lack crucial elements, you have to add them. Finally, you have to pay close attention to your people’s behaviour, but even closer attention to your own. How is it affecting your culture? Are you being the person you want to be? That is what it means to create a great culture. That is also what it means to be a leader.

Bottom Line: Creating A Great Culture Is Real Leadership

Culture is a system of behaviours that you hope most people will follow, most of the time. No large organization ever gets anywhere near 100 percent compliance on every value, but some do much better than others. It’s actually a minor miracle if a culture isn’t dysfunctional. Our aim here is to be better, not perfect.

What Culture Is

<ol><li>Keep what works.</li><li>Create shocking rules</li><li>Dress for success.</li><li>Incorporate outside leadership.</li><li>Make decisions that demonstrate cultural priorities</li><li>Walk the talk.</li><li>Make ethics explicit.</li></ol>Culture is a consequence of actions rather than beliefs, so it almost never ends up exactly the way you intend it. This is why it’s not a “set and forget it” endeavour. You must constantly examine and reshape your culture or it won’t be your culture at all.

The Seven Key Tactics

The Samurai code rested on these eight virtues: rectitude (or justice), courage, honour, loyalty, benevolence, politeness, self-control, and veracity (or sincerity).Each virtue was carefully defined and then reinforced through a set of principles, practices, and stories. They all worked together as a system, balancing one another in a way that made it very difficult for any individual virtue to be misunderstood or misused. The Samurai required everyone to study the code, commit it to memory and live it every day.

The Samurai Code: Eight Virtues

Your view or your executive team’s view of your culture is rarely what your employees experience. The relevant question is, what must employees do to survive and succeed in your organization? If you’re a leader, how do you know what your culture is? The best way to understand your culture is not through what your managers tell you, but through how new employees behave. What behaviours do they perceive will help them fit in and get ahead? That’s your company’s culture.

Your Own Perspective on The Culture Is Not that Relevant

Culture isn't what you say, it's what you do.

Ben Horowitz, a leading venture capitalist, modern management expert, and New York Times bestselling author, combines lessons both from history and from modern organizational practice with practical and often surprising advice to help executives build cultures that can weather both good and bad times. Ben Horowitz has long been fascinated by history, and particularly by how people behave differently than you’d expect. The time and circumstances in which they were raised often shapes them—yet a few leaders have managed to shape their times. In What You Do Is Who You Are, he turns his attention to a question crucial to every organization: how do you create and sustain the culture you want? To Horowitz, culture is how a company makes decisions. It is the set of assumptions employees use to resolve everyday problems: should I stay at the Red Roof Inn, or the Four Seasons? Should we discuss the color of this product for five minutes or thirty hours? If culture is not purposeful, it will be an accident or a mistake. What You Do Is Who You Are explains how to make your culture purposeful by spotlighting four models of leadership and culture-building—the leader of the only successful slave revolt, Haiti’s Toussaint Louverture; the Samurai, who ruled Japan for seven hundred years and shaped modern Japanese culture; Genghis Khan, who built the world’s largest empire; and Shaka Senghor, a man convicted of murder who ran the most formidable prison gang in the yard and ultimately transformed prison culture. Horowitz connects these leadership examples to modern case-studies, including how Louverture’s cultural techniques were applied (or should have been) by Reed Hastings at Netflix, Travis Kalanick at Uber, and Hillary Clinton, and how Genghis Khan’s vision of cultural inclusiveness has parallels in the work of Don Thompson, the first African-American CEO of McDonalds, and of Maggie Wilderotter, the CEO who led Frontier Communications. Horowitz then offers guidance to help any company understand its own strategy and build a successful culture. What You Do Is Who You Are is a journey through culture, from ancient to modern. Along the way, it answers a question fundamental to any organization: who are we? How do people talk about us when we’re not around? How do we treat our customers? Are we there for people in a pinch? Can we be trusted? Who you are is not the values you list on the wall. It’s not what you say in company-wide meeting. It’s not your marketing campaign. It’s not even what you believe. Who you are is what you do. This book aims to help you do the things you need to become the kind of leader you want to be—and others want to follow.

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Corporate Culture

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Leadership & Management

Ben Horowitz, a leading venture capitalist, modern management expert, and New York Times bestselling author, combines lessons both from history and from modern organizational practice with practical and often surprising advice to help executives build cultures that can weather both good and bad times. Ben Horowitz has long been fascinated by history, and particularly by how people behave differently than you’d expect. The time and circumstances in which they were raised often shapes them—yet a few leaders have managed to shape their times. In What You Do Is Who You Are, he turns his attention to a question crucial to every organization: how do you create and sustain the culture you want?To Horowitz, culture is how a company makes decisions. It is the set of assumptions employees use to resolve everyday problems: should I stay at the Red Roof Inn, or the Four Seasons? Should we discuss the color of this product for five minutes or thirty hours? If culture is not purposeful, it will be an accident or a mistake.What You Do Is Who You Are explains how to make your culture purposeful by spotlighting four models of leadership and culture-building—the leader of the only successful slave revolt, Haiti’s Toussaint Louverture; the Samurai, who ruled Japan for seven hundred years and shaped modern Japanese culture; Genghis Khan, who built the world’s largest empire; and Shaka Senghor, a man convicted of murder who ran the most formidable prison gang in the yard and ultimately transformed prison culture.Horowitz connects these leadership examples to modern case-studies, including how Louverture’s cultural techniques were applied (or should have been) by Reed Hastings at Netflix, Travis Kalanick at Uber, and Hillary Clinton, and how Genghis Khan’s vision of cultural inclusiveness has parallels in the work of Don Thompson, the first African-American CEO of McDonalds, and of Maggie Wilderotter, the CEO who led Frontier Communications. Horowitz then offers guidance to help any company understand its own strategy and build a successful culture. What You Do Is Who You Are is a journey through culture, from ancient to modern. Along the way, it answers a question fundamental to any organization: who are we? How do people talk about us when we’re not around? How do we treat our customers? Are we there for people in a pinch? Can we be trusted? Who you are is not the values you list on the wall. It’s not what you say in company-wide meeting. It’s not your marketing campaign. It’s not even what you believe. Who you are is what you do. This book aims to help you do the things you need to become the kind of leader you want to be—and others want to follow.

Ben Horowitz is the cofounder and general partner of Andreessen Horowitz, a Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm that invests in entrepreneurs building the next generation of leading technology companies. The firm's investments include Airbnb, GitHub, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter. Previously, he was cofounder and CEO of Opsware, formerly Loudcloud, which was acquired by Hewlett-Packard for $1.6 billion in 2007. Horowitz writes about his experiences and insights from his career as a computer science student, software engineer, cofounder, CEO, and investor in a blog that is read by nearly 10 million people. He has also been featured in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the New Yorker, Fortune, the Economist, and Bloomberg.

The Effect Of Culture

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