What You Do Is Who You Are

Grove would ask, “How would you sum up the Intel approach?” Someone might answer, “At Intel you don’t wait for someone else to do it. You take the ball yourself and run with it.” Grove would reply, “Wrong. At Intel you take the ball yourself and you let the air out and you fold the ball up and put it in your pocket. Then you take another ball and run with it and when you’ve crossed the goal you take the second ball out of your pocket and reinflate it and score twelve points instead of six.”

And the prime cultural virtue of any startup is survive at all costs.

If I tell you someone is smart and hardworking, but neither humble nor collaborative, that’s going to bring an archetype to mind and it’s not a good one. Same with someone who is humble and collaborative but isn’t smart or hardworking. You know that person and you don’t want them

, then race becomes a reason for making decisions in that culture and the culture often becomes racist. What you do is who you are.

Culture begins with deciding what you value most. Then you must help everyone in your organization practice behaviors that reflect those virtues. If the virtues prove ambiguous or just plain counterproductive, you have to change them. When your culture turns out to lack crucial elements, you have to add them. Finally, you have to pay close attention to your people’s behavior, but even closer attention to your own. How is it affecting your culture? Are you being the person you want to be?

Here’s a checklist of points to keep in mind:

Cultural design. Make sure your culture aligns with both your personality and your strategy. Anticipate how it might be weaponized and define it in a way that’s unambiguous.
Cultural orientation. An employee’s first day at work may not be as indelible as Shaka Senghor’s first day out of quarantine, but it always makes a lasting impression. People learn more about what it takes to succeed in your organization on that day than on any other. Don’t let that first impression be wrong or accidental.
Shocking rules. Any rule so surprising it makes people ask “Why do we have this rule?” will reinforce key cultural elements. Think about how you can shock your organization into cultural compliance.
Incorporate outside leadership. Sometimes the culture you need is so far away from the culture you have that you need to get outside help. Rather than trying to move your company to a culture that you don’t know well, bring in an old pro from the culture you aspire to have.
Object lessons. What you say means far less than what you do. If you really want to cement a lesson, use an object lesson. It need not be a Sun Tzu–style beheading, but it must be dramatic.
Make ethics explicit. One of the most common and devastating mistakes leaders make is to assume people will “Do the right thing” even when it conflicts with other objectives. Don’t leave ethical principles unsaid.
Give cultural tenets deep meaning. Make them stand out from the norm, from the expected. If the ancient samurai had defined politeness the way we define it today, it would have had zero impact on the culture. Because they defined it as the best way to express love and respect, it still shapes Japanese culture today. What do your virtues really mean?
Walk the talk. “Do as I say, not as I do” never works. So refrain from choosing cultural virtues that you don’t practice yourself.
Make decisions that demonstrate priorities. It was not enough for Louverture to say his culture was not about revenge. He had to demonstrate it by forgiving the slave owners.

Loyalty emerges from an expectation that the other party feels the same way; that your colleagues, and your company, are there for you.

Ultimately, loyalty is about the quality of your relationships. People don’t leave companies, they leave managers. If there is no relationship between a manager and an employee or, worse, a bad relationship, you won’t get loyalty regardless of your cultural policy.

The leader of an organization can have meaningful relationships in the company that extend far beyond the people who report to her. If she takes a genuine interest in the people she meets, stays true to her word, and is known throughout the organization as someone you want to get behind, she can create deep bonds and loyalties even in the most dynamic industries.

The truth about telling the truth is that it doesn’t come easy. It’s not natural. What’s natural is telling people what they want to hear. That makes everybody feel good . . . at least for the moment. Telling the truth requires courage. Less remarked on—but equally important, for our purposes—is that it requires judgment and skill.