5 sticky ideas from Ben Horowitz’s book ‘What you do is who you are’.

Your say to do ratio is what programs culture into your team.

1. Culture is to a company as nutrition and training are to an aspiring professional athlete. Great nutrition and training make every athlete better.

2. Culture is how your team makes decisions when you are not there. It’s the set of assumptions that your team uses to resolve problems they face everyday. It’s how they behave when no one is looking.

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

4. Who you are is how people talk about you when you are not around, and this is not determined by the vision 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.

5. Culture is a code of action, a system of virtues not of values. A value is merely a belief, but a virtue is a belief that you actively pursue or embody.

Value: Respect
Virtue: Getting back to customers within 24 hours

Value: Fun
Virtue: Starting / ending meetings with a light hearted joke

Value: Empathy
Virtue: An 80 / 20 split of listening to speaking

A bonus and my favourite:

6. 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.