How to Create Your Business Culture
Ben Horowitz · 2019 · Business
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Ben Horowitz, co-founder of the venture firm Andreessen Horowitz, argues that culture is not a list of values on a wall. It is the set of behaviours that guide how people act and decide when no manager is watching. A company’s culture is defined by what its people actually do, starting with its leaders.
To show how cultures are built and changed, Horowitz draws on unusual examples: Toussaint Louverture, who led the Haitian Revolution and turned formerly enslaved people into a disciplined army; the samurai and their code of Bushido; Genghis Khan’s use of merit and inclusion; and Shaka Senghor, who remade his life and influenced others during a long prison sentence. He pairs these with lessons from modern companies and his own years as a chief executive.
Key insights
- Culture is what people do when nobody is telling them what to do. Judge it by everyday decisions, not by the values statement.
- Create shocking rules that provoke questions. An unusual rule, such as fining anyone who keeps a founder waiting, makes a value impossible to ignore.
- Leaders set culture by example. If you break your own principles, even once, people will copy what you did rather than what you said.
- Express virtues as concrete behaviours rather than abstract values. A word like integrity means little until everyone knows exactly what it requires in practice.
- When reshaping a culture, keep what already works and bring in outside strengths where you lack them, as Toussaint Louverture did when building his army.
Read it if you lead a team and want practical ways to shape how people behave, beyond writing a list of values.