What I Believe About Culture

I've been thinking a lot about culture lately. Not the ping-pong table, free beer, "we're a family" kind of culture that most companies talk about. That stuff is mostly theater. I'm talking about the actual behaviors that make teams work when things get hard.

After building dozens of cross-functional teams, launching countless new products, and working on projects across every stage from zero-to-one to scale, I've come to believe that culture isn't something you hang on a wall or talk about in all-hands meetings. It's what people do when no one is watching. It's the defaults that kick in when pressure mounts.

Most Culture Is Performative Bullshit

Let's start with what culture isn't.

Culture isn't your mission statement. It isn't your values poster. It definitely isn't your company retreat where everyone does trust falls and talks about "synergy."

I've seen too many companies with beautiful culture decks that fall apart the moment someone misses a deadline or a big client gets upset. The values disappear when revenue is on the line. The "collaborative spirit" evaporates when blame needs to be assigned.

Real culture is what happens when the pressure is on. It's whether people escalate problems or hide them. It's whether someone takes ownership of a broken system or just works around it. It's whether feedback flows freely or gets filtered through layers of politeness until it's useless.

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"Culture eats strategy for breakfast." — Peter Drucker

I used to think this was just a catchy saying. Now I know it's literally true. You can have the best strategy in the world, but if your culture doesn't support execution, you'll get beaten by teams with worse plans and better habits.

What Actually Matters

After watching teams succeed and fail, I think there are really only a few things that matter:

Ownership Over Everything Else

The single biggest predictor of whether a team will succeed is whether people actually own outcomes, not just tasks.

I don't mean "accountability" in the corporate buzzword sense. I mean the kind of ownership where someone sees a problem and thinks "this is mine to solve" rather than "this is someone else's job."

When people own outcomes, they don't wait for permission to fix things. They don't punt decisions up the chain. They don't hide problems until they become disasters. They just... handle it.

This isn't about working more hours or taking on more stress. It's about mental models. Do you see yourself as someone who executes tasks, or someone who delivers results? The difference is everything.

Speed With Purpose

I used to think speed was just about moving fast. Now I think it's about eliminating everything that doesn't matter.

The best teams I've worked with don't just move quickly — they move with clarity. They know what they're trying to achieve, they know how they'll measure success, and they ruthlessly cut anything that doesn't contribute to that outcome.

Bad teams mistake motion for progress. They have lots of meetings, lots of process, lots of activity. But when you ask what they're actually trying to accomplish, you get vague answers about "alignment" and "strategic initiatives."

Good teams ship things. They measure results. They iterate based on data, not opinions. They're allergic to busywork.

Team Type	Characteristics	Outcome
High-Performing	Clear goals, fast feedback loops, ownership mindset	Ships features that matter, adapts quickly
Busy But Ineffective	Lots of meetings, process-heavy, task-oriented	Motion without progress, burnout
Dysfunctional	Blame culture, unclear objectives, political	Missed deadlines, quality issues, turnover

Direct Communication

This one is harder than it sounds.

Most people think they communicate clearly, but they don't. They hedge. They qualify. They use corporate speak to avoid saying anything definitive.

"I think we might want to consider potentially exploring the possibility of maybe adjusting our approach..."

Just say what you mean. If something isn't working, say it isn't working. If you need help, ask for help. If you disagree with a decision, explain why.

I'm not talking about being an asshole. I'm talking about being useful. Vague communication helps no one. It doesn't spare feelings — it just delays the inevitable difficult conversation while problems get worse.

Clear communication is a skill, and like any skill, it gets better with practice. But it starts with deciding that being helpful is more important than being comfortable.

"The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place." — George Bernard Shaw

I see this constantly. People walk out of meetings thinking they're aligned, but everyone heard something different. The solution isn't more meetings — it's clearer communication in the first place.

No Passengers

This sounds harsh, but every high-performing team I've seen has figured out how to eliminate passengers.

Passengers are people who show up, do their tasks, and go home. They're not engaged. They're not thinking about the bigger picture. They're not taking initiative. They're just... there.

The problem isn't that passengers are bad people. The problem is that they set the bar. When one person can coast without consequences, others start wondering why they're working so hard. Standards erode quickly.

Great teams have a gravitational pull toward excellence. People want to contribute meaningfully because everyone else is contributing meaningfully. There's social pressure to be engaged, to think, to care about outcomes.

This doesn't happen by accident. It happens when leaders consistently reward ownership and initiative, and when they consistently address situations where people aren't pulling their weight.

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Why This Matters

I think culture is one of the few sustainable competitive advantages left.

Products can be copied. Strategies can be replicated. Talented individuals can be poached. But the way a team actually works together — the defaults they fall back on, the behaviors they reinforce, the standards they maintain — that's much harder to replicate.

When you have a team where everyone owns outcomes, where communication is direct, where speed is balanced with clarity, where passengers can't survive — you can adapt to almost anything. You can pivot strategies, enter new markets, respond to crises, take advantage of opportunities.

When you don't have that foundation, you're always one crisis away from dysfunction.

The Hard Part

None of this is revolutionary. Most people would read these ideas and nod along. The hard part isn't knowing what good culture looks like — it's actually building it.

It requires leaders who model the behaviors they want to see. It requires consistently rewarding the right things and addressing the wrong things, even when it's uncomfortable. It requires admitting when you've made mistakes and changing course when evidence suggests you should.

Most importantly, it requires patience. Culture isn't built in a quarter or even a year. It's built through hundreds of small decisions over time. It's built when you choose the right thing even when the expedient thing would be easier.

But when you get it right, it's magic. Teams that truly work together can accomplish things that seem impossible from the outside.

That's what I believe about culture. Not the poster on the wall version — the real version that shows up when things get hard.