In this post, I’ll go over Ben Horowitz’s What You Do Is Who You Are with a summary of what I’ve learned from the book. The book talks about the importance of culture in a business, and discusses various elements on how a culture works.

In particular, I’ll give a summary of my learnings from What You Do Is Who You Are by talking about:

• What is a culture?
• How to inject ethics into a business culture.
• Using actions to drive culture, and some examples.
• How to ingrain the culture into your company, and keep reinforcing it
• Hiring the right people
• How do you know when the culture you’ve built isn’t working?

And then I’ll give a quick review of what I think of the book.

Please note: this summary of What You Do Is Who You Are is my opinion only. It is shortened and leaves a lot of things out. I’ve put what I think are the most important notes here, but someone different reading it might have a completely different set of notes or ideas derived from the book.

Thus, I highly encourage you to buy it yourself (if you want, you can use my affiliate link above so I can keep paying for this site) so you can have your own take on the book.

What Is Culture, Even?

The summary from What You Do Is Who You Are defines the culture like this:

Culture is just like software code. It’s “code” for your company whose effectiveness is shown by encouraging people to do a certain set of actions.

Culture is complicated, and like code, have bugs. Thus, culture is an iterative process. As a founder, you’ll need to watch the culture closely and make any adjustments as “bugs” and/or unintended consequences for the culture comes up.

In other words, culture is an ever-evolving process where, if you get it right, will have your employees autonomously make good decisions even in the most complicated of situations.

The Problem Of Ethics vs. Culture

Culture can be misinterpreted.

A very intense culture might drive employees to be very aggressive in accomplishing business goals, but forgo ethics. These unethical shortcuts will only pay off in the short-term. This is because you’re about to get sued and lose all the business gains the culture encouraged in the first place.

Thus, ethics oftentimes conflict with company cultures.

You need both a strong company culture to drive output and profits…and you need to run an ethical company so you don’t lose it all.

One thing you must do is to make ethics explicit because otherwise people will only optimize for business goals. And this is natural: the better the business goals are, the more money they think they’ll get due to raises.

If you’d like to inject ethics into your business culture, don’t be vague about your ethics. Spell it out clearly and explain why the ethics must be that way. The book shows a few examples of good vs. bad ways to introduce ethics into your company:

• Good way: Louverture, the leader of the Haitian slave revolution, spelled out what “Do the right thing” meant. Don’t pillage. Don’t cheat on your wife. Take responsibility for yourself, personal industry, social morality, public education, religious toleration, free trade, civic pride, and racial equality.
• Bad way: Uber’s cultural code is just this: “We Do What’s Right, Period.” This is vague. And doesn’t really say anything. Poor cultural programming yields poor results.

A good way to make ethics clear is through case studies. Ben Horowitz talks about the Bushido code which discusses at length that one should return money that they’ve found. Returning money found is obviously the right thing to do, but what if you only did it out of guilt because you’re about to get caught? Or what if you’re struggling and really need the money? The Bushido code outlines these corner cases very specifically and provides 100% clarity what the right thing to do is across different contexts. The Bushido code talks about the psychology and justification one might have in not returning the money for 3 separate situations, so that one can seriously consider the philosophy of whether or not one should return found money.

Ultimately, in the Bushido code, it doesn’t matter what motivations you have. All that matters is that you returned the money as that’s the right thing to do. In summary, what you think isn’t who you are, what you do is who you are.

In other words: It doesn’t matter if your employees have shady thoughts or want to do something unethical. All that matters is that their actions they put out in the real world is ethical, where ethical actions are clearly defined by you.

Which leads us to the next section.

What You Do Is Who You Are AKA Using Action To Drive Culture Summary

The author uses a slave by the name of Louverture as a case study a lot. He’s a slave, that, against all odds, led the Haitian revolution. And won.

One thing he did to drive culture was instead of just saying what a priority is, he’d demonstrate it:

Louverture knew that telling people that agriculture was a priority wouldn’t make it so. He had to do something dramatic to demonstrate that it was the highest priority—something everyone would remember. He forgave the slave owners and let them keep their land. Nothing could be clearer.

Talk is cheap. And talk doesn’t create culture. Action does. If you say one thing and do another, your employees will just do what you do, and ignore everything you say.

It’s like the parent that tells their kids not to eat ice cream while eating an entire pint right in front of them. What do you think the kids’ll do? They’re going to eat ice cream while simultaneously losing respect for their parents for not following their own rules. The kids are also less likely to take their parents seriously and listen to them on other advice.

Instead of “values,” you want to create in your company virtues.

• Values are vague platitudes.
• Virtues are concretely defined actions you give to your employees.

Here’s an example of how loyalty is demonstrated through action By Genghis Khan, instead of just cheap talk.

Unique among conquerors, Genghis never punished any of his generals, which explains why, across six decades, none of them deserted or betrayed him…Genghis demanded that his army’s ethics apply to outsiders as well. When he declared that you must never betray your khan, he intended it as a global rule. After he defeated Jamuka at last, in 1205, some of Jamuka’s men turned their leader over to him, hoping to gain Genghis’s favor. Rather than rewarding these turncoats, he executed them—just as Jamuka had warned them he would. And then he executed Jamuka. By elevating loyalty to a higher principle, Genghis created a massive military advantage. Precisely because he wasn’t asking his troops to die for him, they eagerly would.

Think about it, you’ll be loyal too, if:

1. Being disloyal will get you killed.
2. Knowing everyone else on your team can be trusted and there’s absolutely 0 disloyalty due to the common understanding of being killed if disloyal.

In other words, when you can demonstrate through concrete action and be very specific about what you want your culture to be with 100% clarity, you’ll be able to create the culture that you want in your company.

In summary, what you do is who you are, and who you are will propagate through your company via its culture.

The problem is, nobody knows what all the second-order consequences are for culture, which brings us to the next point.

Culture Requires Change

Culture is hard and has a lot of subtleties. Sometimes, things come up where one part of your culture conflicts with another.

As a founder, you must use conflicting events to update your model of what the perfect culture should look like.

If you fail to adjust your culture to adapt to the times, your company will die.

Ben Horowitz highlights the dichotomy between being a “wartime” vs a “peacetime” CEO.

• A wartime CEO are combative and rule with an iron fist. They’re fairly unbearable and require perfection. Think Steve Jobs and how he used to abuse his employees. Or Elon Musk, when he’d curse at his employees for getting small details wrong.
• A peacetime CEO is very diplomatic and are very Non-Violent Communication. They’re very sensitive and drive a culture which is the picture perfect definition of Politically Correct. They give people freedom and autonomy to do whatever they want. Think Satya of Microsoft.

Both cultures are appropriate, given the context.

When your company is on the brink of destruction and you 100% absolutely must execute certain things to not go bankrupt, you need a wartime CEO. A wartime CEO will get everyone in line and force everyone to execute, even if everyone’s miserable.

A group of miserable employees is better than no employees when the company goes tits up.

When your company is doing very well, a “peacetime CEO” approach is more appropriate. The reason for this is because you’re not trying to achieve a narrow set of objectives in order to keep your company alive.

When your company’s thriving, it’s more important to allow new ideas to flow so that there can be new business opportunities that can be attacked. If a thriving company has a “wartime CEO,” you may anticipate the following to happen:

• Your talent will be dissatisfied and join somewhere more lucrative.
• Your currently working ideas will become old and competitors will erode at your company’s advantage.

As you can see, when a company is trying to survive, a wartime CEO is crucial to have. And conversely, a thriving company must have a peacetime CEO. The culture changes here depending on the context of where the company is.

Failing to adapt the culture to the context of the company will lead to ruin either way.

How To Ingrain/Reinforce The Culture You’ve Built

I’d be remiss in this What You Do Is Who You Are summary if I left out the part where he talks about how to reinforce your culture.

After all, if you’ve invested a ton of time creating a culture and don’t reinforce it: what’s the point? Nobody will follow it and all your efforts to create a working culture for your company will be a waste.

In order to ingrain a culture into your company, you must be annoying and have way too many meetings to keep shoving the culture down your employee’s throats. If as a CEO, you don’t feel you’re being extremely annoying throughout this whole process, you’re not doing it enough.

Another good thing to do to reinforce the culture is have initiatives based on meritocracy. Otherwise, you’ll breed indifference. As an example, the following quote from the book is how I feel at my current job:

If I work hard and my neighbor does nothing and we both have the same impact at the company, then her behavior is obviously the way to go.

It’s normal to be lazy if one’s unincentivized. So much so I wrote an article on how you, too, can minimize your time at work so you can maximize your hourly rate. Employees should be rewarded based on the ROI they provide for your company. Simple as that.

A third thing a good CEO should do is to minimize politics. More politics = worse culture. Politics just create friction your company’s output, and that’s not good. One can minimize politics by:

• Having a policy of “Disagree and Commit.” That is, everyone should have the expectation that not all their ideas will be executed. Sometimes, employees will just do things they don’t agree with for the sake of speed. This’ll reduce politics and a bunch of unnecessary discussions.
• Your managers should support decisions that they disagree with. This is because if managers are outright saying they don’t support the CEO’s decision, this’ll create a culture of rebellion. The employees under the managers will feel it’s OK to not support their managers as well and do whatever work they feel like doing. This degrades into complete chaos.

The final takeaway I had in building and reinforcing a good culture is perhaps the most important. A good CEO msut encourage bad news. The reason’s for this is simple. While people should celebrate wins, wins aren’t important. They’re not what’ll kill your business.

Threats are things that can build and kill your business, make you bankrupt, and are the things of nightmares. Threats are things that must be addressed. Addressing past wins is nice, but optional.

When I heard about a problem, I tried to seem ecstatic. I’d say, “Isn’t it great we found out about this before it killed us?” Or, “This is going to make the company so much stronger once we solve it.” People take their cues from the leader, so if you’re okay with bad news, they’ll be okay, too. Good CEOs run toward the pain and the darkness; eventually they even learn to enjoy it.

In summary, here’s how Ben Horowitz encouraged bad news at his company as he describes it in What You Do Is Who You Are

Many managers want to attend executive staff meetings, as it makes them feel needed and it puts them in the know. I made use of this desire by setting a price of admission to the meeting: you had to fess up to at least one thing that was “on fire.” I’d say, “I know, with great certainty, that there are things that are completely broken in our company and I want to know what they are. If you don’t know what they are, then you are of no use to me in this meeting.” This technique got me deluged in bad news, but it also created a culture where surfacing and discussing problems was not just tolerated, but encouraged. We didn’t solve[…]”

Most of what a CEO does is firefighting / problem-solving. If a CEO’s employees are too afraid are don’t feel good about reporting fires to the firefighter, then 1) the culture is wrong, 2) they’re of no use to the firefighter, and 3) the business will burn down because some fires will spread too much and the company will be too late to react to it.

Now that you can create and reinforce a great culture, you need people that will actually listen and execute on the culture.

So it’s a good thing the book also talks about how to hire the right people.

Summary Of How To Hire The Right People In “What You Do Is Who You Are”

In hiring people, you should look for people who are helpful. Namely, look for people who:

• Do volunteer work. People who invest their own time in helping others without monetary reward tend to be helpful. They’re incentivized by more than just a selfish need to take from others.
• Like learning about the interviewer rather than just talk about themselves. People who like learning about the interviewer can anticipate their desires, and thus be more helpful to them.
• Most people are unhelpful, so screening for this is a good way to eliminate most candidates.

Once you’ve vetted your candidate to be not an unhelpful piece of shit, you need to screen for signs of intelligence. I’d say even at a big-name company I work for, the vast majority of my coworkers have almost no sign of intelligence. This isn’t good because you need to pay your employees. And the more skilled your employees are, the less headaches and the more return you’ll get from them. The book highlights a couple good questions to screen for intelligence:

• “Tell me about the last significant thing you learned about how to do your job better.”
• “What’s something that you’ve automated? What’s a process you’ve had to tear down at a company?”

Now that your employee is known to be helpful and intelligent, it’s time to screen them for teamwork abilities. One question the book uses to screen for collaboration is:

• “Tell me about a situation in your last company where something was substandard and you helped to fix it.”

If you’re able to screen for all these things, you’ll have a necessary but not sufficient way to have a good employee on board.

Yep, nothing’s guaranteed in the hiring process. While you can minimize the number of bad hires, you can’t 100% eliminate them.

Lastly, it’s important to understand as a CEO that if you have a bunch of bad employees in your company, don’t blame your employees. Blame your hiring process for not being able to filter out bad apples.

How Do You Know When Your Culture Isn’t Working?

As I’ve said in the previous section, company culture changes depending on the context of the company.

Culture is an iterative process.

But how do you know when to “debug” your culture?

You don’t want to fix what’s already working, so how do you know when to even start adjusting your culture?

The telltale sign of your culture sucking is if the wrong people are quitting too often. If people who aren’t a culture fit are quitting, that’s actually preferable.

But if the wrong people are quitting your culture is screwed up and it isn’t what you wanted. By definition, if the wrong people are quitting, the people who are a good fit to what you think is an ideal culture are leaving. Hence, there’s something wrong with your current culture.

When good people are quitting, one of the first places you should look is your managers. Most people leave companies because of managers, not because of the “company.” If you’ve a great manager you like working with, it won’t matter if the company is “bad.”

Conversely, if your company is a big-name company and is “good” – it won’t matter if your manager is terrible. You’ll suffocate and want to quit.

Quick Summary & Review Of What You Do Is Who You Are

In summary, Ben Horowitz wrote a really good book about culture with What You Do Is Who You are. He talked about everything from how to create a good culture, how to enforce it, to how to find the right people so that your company runs smoothly.

I personally love the idea of “What You Do Is Who You Are.”

Ultimately, actions matter infinitely more than words. Words can be faked, but actions can’t.

This is an extremely detailed book on how to be a good company culture and in summary, I’d give What You Do Is Who You Are 4/5 stars.

The reason this doesn’t get 5 stars is the narrow appeal of this. Coming from more of a background of smaller businesses where I am a one-man team or a 2-man team, culture doesn’t matter too much. We’re not hiring and your business partner you choose for your small business should already be on roughly the same page as you anyway as far as culture goes.

Thus, I feel this book is really only relevant for those who are preparing to hire and maintain a bigger team/company, which isn’t a lot of people.

But despite the narrow appeal, I’d say the information in this book is quite good, as is empirically shown by Ben Horowitz’s own personal track record in both his cloud company and his Venture Capital company.