How to Build A Magnetic Team Culture Guaranteed to Win

What You Do Is Who You Are

Culture is one of those words that means everything and nothing.

We need a strong culture. Culture eats strategy for breakfast. They're not a culture fit.

But when you pause to ask most people to describe what culture is, they fumble.

I found two descriptions I liked equally. One from the book, What You Do Is Who You Are. The other is from a work of fiction.

Ben Horowitz, the co-founder of the VC firm Andreessen Horowitz, studied a range of strong cultures well outside the typical business contexts. Think prison gangs and slave rebellions.

After carefully observing the invisible glue that binds a group of people, here's how he describes culture.

While I believe in the value of writing it down and saying it aloud, none of that matters without the behaviors to back it up.

The difference between values and slogans is sacrifice.

Here's my two-question test.

1. Would you pass over an outrageously qualified candidate who was not aligned to the core tenants of your culture?

2. Would you fire your top producer for behavior outside of your cultural expectations?

Where the answer is Yes - that's your culture.

But for those aspects where you rationalize exceptions...

Those might be valuable, but they're not your values.

My other favorite definition brings this home. It's from Fredrik Backman, author of Beartown:

Because culture, at its essence, is behavior.

It's how we show up in the big moments as well as the small ones.

It's how we treat others. It's what we tell customers. It's how we solve problems.

It's what we do when everyone's watching. And especially when they're not.

It's the easy decisions we make. And the hard ones that we don't.

So What's the Right Culture?

I have bad news. No one has the answer to this but you.

Culture is neither uniform nor is it static. What served you at 5 people might not serve you at 50 or 500. And what makes your system hum won't work for your competitor.

Take Netflix. Reed Hastings set out to build a company with an international culture from Day 1. They publish their now famous culture deck to the company and the world.

They have since rewritten it into a culture memo. And while many aspects remain consistent, it has evolved to meet its global expansion and shifting business focus.

The Principles at Bridgewater, which serve as an operating system for the world's largest hedge fund, also evolved. What started as an 80-page memo from the founder was debated by 1000s of employees and turned into a 300-page bestseller a decade later.

So while there is no one-size-fits-all paint-by-numbers culture template, you will see that companies applauded for their strong culture tend to share three foundational elements.

They Repel. I led a Netflix case discussion with a client recently. Most of the employees could not imagine a worse place to work. And that's the point. For the right people, they can't imagine working anywhere else.