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 best-selling 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 30 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 700 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 audiobook aims to help you do the things you need to become the kind of leader you want to be - and others want to follow.

©2019 Ben Horowitz (P)2019 HarperAudio

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

stunning revealing and challenging

I was very engaged while listening to this book. So enjoyable. An excellent performance. The concept of this book was absolutely brilliant. Kudos to Ben Horowitz for his truly inspired genius work.

Love it! Wartime vs peacetime CEOs...

As a pragmatic CEO, chief mentor, and author, I enjoyed Ben’s The Hard Thing About Hard Things, especially real wartime CEOs vs Sunday-driving peacetime CEOs. This book goes deeper into culture building and honing, something I myself pay much attention to as an integrated peace-wartime leader. Great work, Ben!

Excellent book, with some bitter irony

Like the author’s previous book, this title provides great information. The unconventional nature of some of his model leaders helps bring the lessons to life. If you’re used to business books that draw all of their examples from the business world, then you may (as I did) find this to be a refreshing and intriguing change.

The bitter irony: I listened to this title in March of 2022, as news about the large-scale hack of Okta, and the company’s less-than-straightforward response, was all over the news. To hear Okta held up in this book as a company that had “never been hacked,” and as an example of a great culture, was a lesson in just how fragile great cultures can be.

As with the author’s previous book, this title is brought to life by the exceptional narrator. Kevin Kenerly is extraordinarily good. I would listen to him read the phone book, if phone books still existed.

Fascinating anecdotes and great insights from a very respected

Leader. Ben Horowitz. Loved how he wove in prison gang culture, tech culture, Genghis Khan, CEO McDonalds. Great book!

Very useful advice about how to build your company’s culture

I liked how Ben went from discussing great leaders and their behaviors and projecting these values to building a company with a solid culture.