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

In any human interaction, the required amount of communication is inversely proportional to the level of trust.

As CEO, I wasn’t zero-tolerance about much, but I was definitely zero-tolerance on managers who undermined decisions, because that led to cultural chaos.

The final vital component of the decision-making process is “Do you favor speed or accuracy and by how much?”

Cultural design.

We have three rules here at Netscape. The first rule is if you see a snake, don’t call committees, don’t call your buddies, don’t form a team, don’t get a meeting together, just kill the snake. The second rule is don’t go back and play with dead snakes. Too many people waste too much time on decisions that have already been made. And the third rule

Keep What Works

Explain why taking the action you’re taking is essential to the larger mission and how important that mission is.

Because your culture is how your company makes decisions when you’re not there. It’s the set of assumptions your employees use to resolve the problems they face every day. It’s how they behave when no one is looking. If you don’t methodically set your culture, then two-thirds of it will end up being accidental, and the rest will be a mistake.

Make ethics explicit.

Incorporate outside leadership.