What You Do Is Who You Are

How to Create Your Business Culture

By: Ben Horowitz

Narrated by: Kevin Kenerly

Ben Horowitz, a leading venture capitalist, modern management expert, and New York Times bestselling author, combines lessons both from history and from modern organizational practice with practical and often surprising advice to help executives build cultures that can weather both good and bad times.

Ben Horowitz has long been fascinated by history, and particularly by how people behave differently than you’d expect. The time and circumstances in which they were raised often shapes them—yet a few leaders have managed to shape their times. In What You Do Is Who You Are, he turns his attention to a question crucial to every organization: how do you create and sustain the culture you want?

To Horowitz, culture is how a company makes decisions. It is the set of assumptions employees use to resolve everyday problems: should I stay at the Red Roof Inn, or the Four Seasons? Should we discuss the color of this product for five minutes or thirty hours? If culture is not purposeful, it will be an accident or a mistake.

What You Do Is Who You Are explains how to make your culture purposeful by spotlighting four models of leadership and culture-building—the leader of the only successful slave revolt, Haiti’s Toussaint Louverture; the Samurai, who ruled Japan for seven hundred years and shaped modern Japanese culture; Genghis Khan, who built the world’s largest empire; and Shaka Senghor, a man convicted of murder who ran the most formidable prison gang in the yard and ultimately transformed prison culture.

Horowitz connects these leadership examples to modern case-studies, including how Louverture’s cultural techniques were applied (or should have been) by Reed Hastings at Netflix, Travis Kalanick at Uber, and Hillary Clinton, and how Genghis Khan’s vision of cultural inclusiveness has parallels in the work of Don Thompson, the first African-American CEO of McDonalds, and of Maggie Wilderotter, the CEO who led Frontier Communications. Horowitz then offers guidance to help any company understand its own strategy and build a successful culture.

What You Do Is Who You Are is a journey through culture, from ancient to modern. Along the way, it answers a question fundamental to any organization: who are we? How do people talk about us when we’re not around? How do we treat our customers? Are we there for people in a pinch? Can we be trusted?

Who you are is not the values you list on the wall. It’s not what you say in 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 aims to help you do the things you need to become the kind of leader you want to be—and others want to follow.

Insightful

This is the second book from be horowitz that I've read and I again have found it candid and enlightening. He goes into great depth to unpack the concept and power of culture that I previously didn't consider. I found some great tips and information in this book.

Another great book by Ben

Ben does a fantastic job breaking down the road importance of culture. I highly recommend reading after reading his first book.

Highly recommend What You Do is Who your Are!

As an avid listener of business and management books, I highly recommend this audiobook for IT and business Leaders and aspiring leaders. I found myself being inspired and empowered to influence my company culture in a positive way. The well told stories from Abe Lincoln to Genghis Khan from history juxtaposed with how they apply to companies including Uber, Facebook and Google kept me at the edge of my seat. Kevin Kenerly has a very expressive voice which makes the audiobook format especially enjoyable. Bravo Ben! Please keep sharing your unique style of wisdom.

A good follow up to hard things about hard things

Ben’s follow up is a nice companion piece to his original book. I would say this is a 1A to Hard Things rather than a new pursuit entirely.

The Narrator Tries to hard

The narrator is trying to hard to imitate people it sounds corny and in authentic. When you put on your hip hop voice and pronounce Nas wrong its a huge tell. Especially in a book about knowing culture