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

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

Ben Horowitz, a leading venture capitalist, modern management expert, and New York Times bestselling author combines lessons both from history and modern organisational practice with practical and often surprising advice to help us build cultures that can weather both good and bad times. The times and circumstances in which people were raised often shape them – yet a few leaders have managed to shape their times. In this follow-up to the bestselling business classic The Hard Thing About Hard Things, Ben Horowitz turns his attention to a question crucial to every organisation: How do you create and sustain the culture you want? This book is a journey through cultures ancient to modern, spotlighting models of leadership and culture-building from the samurai to prison gangs. Along the way, it answers fundamental questions: Who are we? How do people talk about us when we’re not around? How do we treat our customers? Can we be trusted?  Because who you are is not the values you list on the wall. It’s not what you say in a company-wide meeting. It’s not your marketing campaign. It’s not even what you believe. Who you are is what you do. This book will help you do the things needed to become the kind of leader you want to be – and others want to follow.

WHAT YOU DO IS WHO YOU ARE

HOW TO CREATE YOUR BUSINESS CULTURE

Ben Horowitz

Copyright (#u90ada14f-717f-5c57-ba46-68a0f789ed63)

William Collins

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

1 London Bridge Street

London SE1 9GF

www.WilliamCollinsBooks.co.uk (http://www.WilliamCollinsBooks.co.uk)

This eBook first published in Great Britain by William Collins in 2019

Copyright © Ben Horowitz 2019

Cover design by Andrew Guinn

Jacket photograph © Beowulf Sheehan

Ben Horowitz asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Information on previously published material appears here (#litres_trial_promo).

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins

Source ISBN: 9780008356118

Ebook Edition © October 2019 ISBN: 9780008356132

Version: 2019-09-24

Dedication (#u90ada14f-717f-5c57-ba46-68a0f789ed63)

This is for all the people serving time who did what they did, but are now doing something positive. I see what you are doing.

I know who you are.

One hundred percent of my portion of the proceeds of this book will go to help people coming out of prison change their culture and remain free, and to the people in Haiti trying to rebuild their society and return to the glory of their past.

CONTENTS

Cover (#u6af08dbe-645d-55a6-bf7e-808c53381bd4)

Title Page (#uc1c5687a-2538-55b6-b794-2cbf6daf67b8)

Copyright

Dedication

Foreword by Henry Louis Gates Jr.

Introduction: What You Do Is Who You Are

1 Culture and Revolution: The Story of Toussaint Louverture (#u065848a5-d694-511a-979d-6f5d3557b913)

2 Toussaint Louverture Applied

3 The Way of the Warrior

4 The Warrior of a Different Way: The Story of Shaka Senghor (#litres_trial_promo)

5 Shaka Senghor Applied

6 Genghis Khan, Master of Inclusion

7 Inclusion in the Modern World

8 Be Yourself, Design Your Culture

9 Edge Cases and Object Lessons

10 Final Thoughts

Author’s Note

Index

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Also by Ben Horowitz

About the Publisher

FOREWORD (#u90ada14f-717f-5c57-ba46-68a0f789ed63)