What You Do Is Who You Are: How to Create Your Business Culture by Ben Horowitz

A great book to read by the leaders in any organization. The book provides excellent insights into the Business Cultures in any organization.

I recommend you to pick this book and read if you are a leader, entrepreneur, or an aspiring leader.

Some vital learning for me personally were:

Understanding the difference between Virtues and ValuesNo author, in my experience, has explained this in such a simple way.

“Virtues are What you do! Values are What you believe”

Any company with great products or services with good demand may succeed in the short run. “Great Culture” is a prerequisite to success in the long term. I loved the example given in this book.

Culture is to a company as nutrition and training are to an aspiring professional athlete. If the athlete is talented enough, he’ll 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

The relationship between communication and level of Trust, as explained in the book, was a kind of reaffirming my belief in the role of TRUST in any organization system. A high level of TRUST requires lesser communication.In any human interaction, the required amount of communication is inversely proportional to the level of trust.

I managed to pick some history from the book as well. I never heard of

Louverture

in world history. The leadership principles and practices that made him successful was based on what he believed, and he continually communicates. His virtues were

Keep What works

Create shocking rules

Dress for success

Incorporate outside leadership

Make decisions that demonstrate cultural priorities.

Walk the talk

Make ethics explicit

Rules play a crucial role in building Culture. Rules need to be integrated with the routines.

If people forget the rule, they forget the culture.

Once own perspective on Culture is not important, what makes the difference is the way the Culture gets imbedded into the routines within the organization.Uber’s CEO, Dara Khosrowshahi, refers to it as “weaponizing the culture.”

According to

Bushido, Culture is not a set of beliefs, but a set of actions.

Some points on creating and nurturing Culture in an organization.

Creating an environment of Trust

Openness to Bad News

Focussing on Issues not People

Build Loyalty