Thread by @Kpaxs

"What You Do Is Who You Are" by Ben Horowitz.

A great book with practical advices and examples about a difficult topic: business culture.

My highlights with no additional commentary:

Your culture is how your company makes decisions when you’re not there.

If you see something below standard and do nothing, then you’ve set a new standard.

Virtues are what you do, while values are merely what you believe.

Doing is what matters.

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.

Culture is to a company as nutrition and training are to an aspiring professional athlete.

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.

Without trust, communication breaks.

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

The more counterintuitive the leader’s decision, the stronger the impact on the culture.

When you show up late, you are effectively robbing your colleagues.

For a culture to stick, it must reflect the leader’s actual values, not just those he thinks sound inspiring.

Because a leader creates culture chiefly by his actions—by example.

Create a Shocking Rule:

— It must be memorable.
— It must raise the question “Why?”
— Its cultural impact must be straightforward.
— People must encounter the rule almost daily.

When Tom Coughlin coached the NYGiants, he set a shocking rule:

“If you are on time, you are late.”

You are either selling or being sold: if you aren’t selling a customer on your product then the customer is selling you on why she isn’t going to buy it.

If you remember one thing, remember that ethics are about hard choices.

The best way to understand your culture is not through what managers tell you, but through how new employees behave.

If you ask a bad question you will get a bad answer.

If you only listen to music from one race then you probably do not understand music.

If you only hire talented people from one race or gender, then you probably do not understand talent.

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

If you’re humble, people want you to succeed. If you’re selfish, they want you to fail.

Speed is far more important than accuracy.

In many cases, it will often be faster to make the wrong decision, discover that it’s wrong, and pivot to the right decision, than to spend the time a priori figuring out the right decision.

The truth about telling the truth is that it doesn’t come easy. It’s not natural.

What’s natural is telling people what they want to hear.

That makes everybody feel good ... at least for the moment.

Telling the truth requires courage.

People don’t leave companies, they leave managers.

You can buy the book here:

amazon.com/What-You-Do-Wh…