Ben Horowitz on Culture: "You have to move culture. You can't dictate it."

In my first week of work at LinkedIn, my boss Dan called me out. We were coming out of a meeting where I’d been scrolling through my cell phone. I hadn’t really thought much about this. I’d done it all the time in my last job. But, he pulled me aside and said: we don’t look at our smartphones during meetings here.

Sure enough. In meetings here, smartphones are all turned off and mostly hidden from view. Dan’s corrections was one of the many small actions that pile up to determine a company's culture. And the culture is key to how we get things done at work – at LinkedIn, and everywhere else.

When a culture works, Work works. But how about when it doesn’t? Like, when an office feels downright toxic? Can you change how you expect people to work together?

This week’s guest is Ben Horowitz. He’s a venture capitalist who’s had a ton of experience with this. He’s helped build several companies, the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. And, he’s been investing in and advising companies for more than a decade. 

Ben’s a bit of a management guru among startup founders in Silicon Valley. They often reference his theory that companies need different kinds of leaders when they are facing threats as opposed to when business is good. Call it the wartime-peacetime theory. His latest book is called "What You Do Is Who You Are – How to Create Your Business Culture." 

You can download the episode to hear about it. Then, please, share your own thoughts and tag them #HelloMonday so I can jump into the conversation.

Here are some highlights….

On defining culture: “The code of the samurai says, which is culture is not a set of actions or a set of beliefs. It's a set of actions.”

On setting culture at his own firm: “If you're late to a meeting with an entrepreneur, it's $10 a minute. I don't care if you had to go to the bathroom. Five minutes late is $50.”

On determining its health: “The leader rarely knows that the culture has gone adrift because they're not living in it in the same way that an employee is.”

On feedback: “Particularly if you're the leader of an organization, it's very frequent that people don't want to hear the truth, or what they really need to know. People don't give feedback because they struggle with being honest. They don't want to be honest because they don't want another person to go, ‘wow, I don't like you.’”

On bringing on new people: “When people come into a company, they bring whatever culture they have with them. And if you don't systematically assimilate them into your culture, you are going to assimilate into their culture.”

I want to hear from you...

And, I keep thinking about the distinction Ben drew in our conversation between being honest and being liked. We say we want to be honest, but maybe what we want even more is to be liked. What do you think? Drop us a line at [email protected], or post on LinkedIn, using the hashtag #HelloMonday.

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