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.
To get them to be who you want, you will first need to see them for who they are. I wish I could give you a simple set of steps to do that, but there is no formula. Instead well consider all these questions from a variety of perspectives. To that end, these chapters also feature modern-day case studies, usually worked up from my conversations with leaders who tried to change their companies. For instance, I examine how Toussaint Louvertures cultural techniques were appliedor should have been appliedby Reed Hastings at Netflix, Travis Kalanick at Uber, and Hillary Clinton, and how Genghis Khans 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.
I begin the second part of the book by walking you through how to understand your own personality and your companys strategy and how to use that understanding to build the culture you need to succeed. Culture only works if the leader visibly participates in and vocally champions it. But most people dont walk around with a supersharp definition of their personal cultural values. So how do you identify who you are and what parts of you belong in the organization (and dont belong)? How do you become the kind of leader that you yourself want to follow?
Then I look at edge cases that can place your culture in conflict with itself or with your business priorities. And finally, I discuss a few components that probably belong in every culture, and give you a checklist of crucial principles.
Culture isnt a magical set of rules that makes everyone behave the way youd like. Its a system of behaviors that you hope most people will follow, most of the time. Critics love to attack companies for having a broken culture or being morally corrupt, but its actually a minor miracle if a culture isnt dysfunctional. No large organization ever gets anywhere near 100 percent compliance on every value, but some do much better than others. Our aim here is to be better, not perfect.
As a final word of discouragement: a great culture does not get you a great company. If your product isnt superior or the market doesnt want it, your company will fail no matter how good its culture is. Culture is to a company as nutrition and training are to an aspiring professional athlete. If the athlete is talented enough, hell succeed despite relatively poor nutrition and a below-average training regimen. If he lacks talent, perfect nutrition and relentless training will not qualify him for the Olympics. But great nutrition and training make every athlete better.
If a great culture wont ensure success, why bother? In the end, the people who work for you wont remember the press releases or the awards. Theyll lose track of the quarterly ups and downs. They may even grow hazy about the products. But they will never forget how it felt to work there, or the kind of people they became as a result. The companys character and ethos will be the one thing they carry with them. It will be the glue that holds them together when things go wrong. It will be their guide to the tiny, daily decisions they make that add up to a sense of genuine purpose.
This book is not a comprehensive set of techniques for creating a perfect culture. There is no one ideal. A cultures strengths may also be its weaknesses. And sometimes you have to break a core principle of your culture to survive. Culture is crucial, but if the company fails because you insist on cultural purity, youre doing it wrong.
Instead, the book will take you on a journey through culture, from ancient to modern. Along the way, you will learn how to answer a question fundamental to any organization: who are we? A simple-seeming question thats not simple at all. Because who you are is how people talk about you when youre not around. How do you treat your customers? Are you there for people in a pinch? Can you be trusted?
Who you are is not the values you list on the wall. Its not what you say at an all-hands. Its not your marketing campaign. Its not even what you believe.
Its what you do. What you do is who you are. This book aims to help you do the things you need to do so you can be who you want to be.