Every quarter, I share helpful summaries and excerpts of the best books, podcasts, and articles I’ve read about organizational culture.
Book: What You do is Who You Are by Ben Horowitz
Ben Horowitz is the co-founder of Andreessen Horowitz, a VC firm. He is also an incredible writer who came out with a new book last fall, What You do is Who You Are. The book is about how to create a culture that lasts, using examples from history, including Haiti’s slave revolt, Japan’s samurais, Genghis Khan, and Shaka Senghor, who transformed prison culture. Here are some passages I found helpful.
On defining 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 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.
On writing cultural virtues/rules:
Create Shocking Rules: Here are the rules for writing a rule so powerful it sets the culture for many years: It must be memorable. If people forget the rule, they forget the culture. 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?” Its cultural impact must be straightforward. The answer to the “Why?” must clearly explain the cultural concept. People must encounter the rule almost daily. If your incredibly memorable rule applies only to situations people face once a year, it’s irrelevant. When Tom Coughlin coached the New York Giants, from 2004 to 2015, the media went crazy over a shocking rule he set: If you are on time, you are late. He started every meeting five minutes early and fined players one thousand dollars if they were late. I mean on time. Wait, what? At first, the “Coughlin Time” rule went over poorly. Several players filed grievances with the NFL and the New York Times wrote a scathing critique: In the player-relations department, the reign of Giants Coach Tom Coughlin started poorly and is already showing signs of unraveling one game into the season. On the heels of Sunday’s 31–17 loss to the Eagles, the N.F.L. Players Association confirmed that three Giants had filed a grievance against Coughlin for fining them for not being early enough for a meeting. A few weeks ago, linebackers Carlos Emmons and Barrett Green and cornerback Terry Cousin, all free-agent acquisitions in the off-season, were fined $1,000 each after showing up several minutes early for a meeting, only to be told they needed to arrive earlier. Coughlin’s response to the reporter didn’t make him seem more sympathetic, but it did solidify his rule: “Players ought to be there on time, period,” he said. “If they’re on time, they’re on time. Meetings start five minutes early.” Was the rule memorable? Check. Did it beg the question “Why?” He had players asking everyone from the league to the New York Times “Why?” so, check. Did they encounter it daily? Yep, they ran into it every time they had to be somewhere. But what was he trying to achieve? Eleven years and two Super Bowl wins later, backup quarterback Ryan Nassib explained the cultural intention to the Wall Street Journal: Coughlin Time is more of a mindset, kind of a way for players to discipline themselves, making sure they’re on time, making sure they’re attentive and making sure they’re ready to work when it’s time to start meetings. It’s actually kind of nice because once you get out in the real world, you’re five minutes early to everything.
On decision making:
So it’s critical to a healthy culture that whatever your decision-making process, you insist on a strict rule of disagree and commit. If you are a manager, at any level, you have a fundamental responsibility to support every decision that gets made. You can disagree in the meeting, but afterward you must not only support the final decision, you must be able to compellingly articulate the reasons the decision was made. The manager should have said, “This was a really tough decision. While we have done great work and our project shows real promise, when you consider the overall priorities of the business and where we are with cash, it just does not make sense to continue. We have to focus on our core areas. So, to make sure that everyone on this team is deployed to their highest and best use right now, we have decided to cancel the project.” After a major decision like this, it’s a good practice to ask employees what they thought of the decision—that way you can find out if the rationale behind the move cascaded down the organization with fidelity. As CEO, I wasn’t zero-tolerance about much, but I was definitely zero-tolerance on managers who undermined decisions, because that led to cultural chaos.
Article: Struggling to Thrive as a Large Team Working Remotely? This Exec Has the Field Guide You Need
Many of the articles I’ve read in the past two months have specific tips for how to run remote meetings or what to do for your virtual happy hours. However, this article from First Round Review makes the point that it’s impossible to copy and paste what works from one organization to another. Instead the article provides general guidelines and needs so you can figure out what works in your culture.
Guide: The Basecamp Guide to Internal Communication
As I mentioned above, it is not a good idea to copy and paste from another organization. However, it can be helpful to see the details of how another organization works so you can create a similar guide for your organization. Basecamp is an all-remote organization and they published a guide about how to communicate internally. For example, here is one of the bullets:
Writing solidifies, chat dissolves. Substantial decisions start and end with an exchange of complete thoughts, not one-line-at-a-time jousts. If it's important, critical, or fundamental, write it up, don't chat it down.
What I like about this guide is how specific, explicit, and detail-oriented it is. The act of writing a guide like this within your own organization can be clarifying, even if you never intend on publishing it publicly.