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.
