In the end, the people who work for you won’t remember the press releases or the awards. They’ll lose track of the quarterly ups and downs. They may even grow hazy about the products. But they will never forget how it felt to work here, or the kind of people they became as a result.
The writing is a bit off. Fans from The Hard Things about Hard Things can immediately spot the differences. I almost felt like I am reading Aesop’s Fables in kindergarten.
“What have we learned today from the red hood? You should know what your grandma look like!”
Yeah. Toussaint Louverture turned slaves into army, Genghis Khan created an inclusive diverse culture within the tribe, and Shaka Senghor even created culture in prison – a place where culture seems pointless. But are we really going to rely on THESE stories to help creating company cultures?
However, this book is great at presenting some notable points though:
A great culture does not get you a great company. It’s almost like OKR. Google is not great because they are using OKR, they are great because of many different things, and I can argue that OKR is not even one of them. A shitty company won’t turn into a good company because they are have good culture, BUT good culture sure as hell can keep a good company great.
The company’s character and ethos will be the one thing they carry with them. It will be the glue that holds them together when things go wrong. It will be their guide to the tiny, daily decisions they make that add up to a sense of genuine purpose.
In the end, leaders and executives must realize that culture is presented by them to the entire company, not by repeatedly mentioning in meetings, but by acting it.
Walk the talk guys. Walk the talk.