The Holloway Syllabus on Company Culture

Introduction

Culture is the tacit social order of an organization: It shapes attitudes and behaviors in wide-ranging and durable ways. Cultural norms define what is encouraged, discouraged, accepted, or rejected within a group. When properly aligned with personal values, drives, and needs, culture can unleash tremendous amounts of energy toward a shared purpose and foster an organization’s capacity to thrive. Boris Groysberg, Jeremiah Lee, Jesse Price, and J. Yo-Jud Cheng (The Culture Factor)

To create this resource list, we put in more than 40 hours of research and worked with Tom Eisenmann from Harvard Business School, Nadia Eghbal from Protocol Labs, and Dasha Maggio from Felicis Ventures to pull together and vet great resources. We believe this is the most comprehensive and authoritative list (over 230 resources!) to help you master the ins and outs of company culture.

The concept of “company culture” often seems to be something between a buzzword, an enigma, and a feeling. Company culture is an expression of shared values, a reflection of leadership, the way colleagues relate to and treat one another, a sense of safety and belonging, a question of how a company reacts to the challenges it faces, and more. It can be a source of profitability and a reason excellent employees stay, or it can lead to wrongdoing, disaffection, and even criminal conduct.

Company Culture 101

Overview

• 🔥 The Culture Cliché — Claire Lew
• 🔥 Most Company Culture Posts are Fluffy Bullshit — Here is what you actually need to know — Eric Jorgenson — Summarizing the many dimensions of culture
• Programming Your Culture — Ben Horowitz
• The Culture Factor — Boris Groysberg, Jeremiah Lee, Jesse Price, and J. Yo-Jud Cheng

What Is Company Culture?

• Culture Isn’t Kumbaya Stuff — Justin Moore and First Round Review
• ​paid​Understanding and Developing Organizational Culture — Society for Human Resource Management
• Measuring Organizational Cultures: A Qualitative and Quantitative Study across Twenty Cases — Geert Hofstede, Bram Neuijen, Denise Daval Ohayv, and Geert Sanders

Why Does Company Culture Matter?

• Culture: Why It’s The Hottest Topic In Business Today — Josh Bersin
• Why Great Employees Leave “Great Cultures” — Melissa Daimler
• ​document​ The Value of Corporate Culture — Luigi Guiso, Paola Sapienza, and Luigi Zingales — Studying the relationship between corporate culture and company performance
• Your Culture Will Make or Break Your Business — Laszlo Bock
• Don’t Fuck Up the Culture — Brian Chesky
  • A Critique of “Don’t Fuck Up The Culture” — Scott Berkun

Elements of Company Culture

Values

What Are Company Values?

• Startup Culture: Values vs. Vibe — Chris Moody
• The Difference Between Culture and Values — Matt Blumberg
  • How We Think About Values Versus Deeply Held Beliefs — Brad Feld

How Are Values Put Into Action?

• Draw The Owl and Other Company Values You Didn’t Know You Should Have — Jeff Lawson and First Round Review — How to articulate, live, and test your company values
• How We Created Our Company Values From Scratch — Hannah Alvarez
• How to Establish Values on a Small Team — Amelia Friedman
• Make Your Values Mean Something — Patrick M. Lencioni

Organizational Structure

Why Does Structure Matter?

• ​document​ The Mutual Impact of Organizational Culture and Structure — Nebojša Janićijević
• Organizational Debt is like Technical debt — but worse — Steve Blank — How a startup can accrue organizational debt, and just like technical debt, how it needs to be refactored

What Kind of Structure Should You Have?

• No Departments — Eric Ries — Why startups should not have departments
• Here’s Why You Should Care About Holacracy — Adam Pisoni
• Organizational Structure Is All About Pragmatism — Elad Gil
• Flat Will Kill You, Eventually: Why Every Company Needs Structure — Mark Nichols
• ​video​What are you willing to give up to change the way we work? — Martin Danoesastro

Good Leadership

Leaders’ Impact on Culture

• 80% of Your Culture is Your Founder — Molly Graham
• Travis Kalanick: Monster or Martyr? What Silicon Valley Can Learn from His Fate — Patrick Ewers

Positive Leadership Qualities

• What Do Norwegians Get Dead Right About Work Culture That Can Make You a Better Leader? — Ingrid L. Williams
• ​video​Humble Leadership — Edgar Schein and Karen May
• ​video​Why Leaders Eat Last — Simon Sinek
• ​audio​Modern Manager Podcast: Be a Culture Change Agent with Wes Kao — Mamie Kanfer Stewart and Wes Kao
  • Write-up based on this episode

Developing Leaders

• Getting promoted too quickly — Bijan Sabet — The risk of promoting managers too quickly
• Career Development: What It Really Means to be a Manager, Director, or VP — Dave Kellogg — Distinguishing these three levels in terms of how much supervision they receive
• Managing managers: How’s it different? — Claire Lew
• ​video​How to break bad management habits before they reach the next generation of leaders — Elizabeth Lyle

Communication

Collaboration

• How to Foster a Cooperative Culture — Lynda Gratton
• 8 steps to promoting collaboration in your company — Joanne Graf
• Eight Ways to Build Collaborative Teams — Lynda Gratton and Tamara J. Erickson

Transparency

• 10 Things Transparency Can Do For Your Company — William Craig
• Transparent Team Communication: Why and How to Embrace It — Mila Urosevic
• Radical Candor — The Surprising Secret to Being a Good Boss — Kim Scott and First Round Review
• 4 Ways to Build Transparency as a Leader — Tammy Perkins
• How to Maintain Transparency in Your Business at Different Levels — Shane Barker
• How Open Should a Startup CEO be with Staff? — Mark Suster

Communication Roadblocks

• ​login​Two-Thirds of Managers Are Uncomfortable Communicating with Employees — Lou Solomon
• A Good Place to Work — Ben Horowitz — The importance of regular check-ins
• ​login​Research: Vague Feedback Is Holding Women Back — Shelley Correll and Caroline Simard
• The One Word Men Never See In Their Performance Reviews — Kathleen Davis

Effective Feedback Loops

There’s a lot of good advice out there on how to give feedback effectively. We consider this a net positive. That said, readers may find it more daunting to read each and every one of these resources, and we suggest that you take a look through, focusing now on any that apply to particular situations in which you find yourself and returning to this list as you face new challenges or seek to grow.

• How to Create a Feedback Culture — Dave Bailey
• Gratitude as a Company Value — Anil Dash
• Making Yourself a CEO — Ben Horowitz — How/why a CEO should deliver effective feedback
• 13 Secret Questions That Google Uses To Collect Employee Feedback — Zack Friedman
• 🔥 When to give feedback to an employee? — Claire Lew
• AltSchool’s CEO Rebuilt Google’s Performance Review System to Work for Startups — Here It Is — Max Ventilla and First Round Review
• How to Deliver Constructive Feedback in Difficult Situations — Dave Bailey
• The Meta-Conversation — Julie Zhuo — Addressing cases in which the person you’re talking to may not be receptive to feedback
• ​paid​You’ve been Doing a Fantastic Job. Just One Thing… — Alina Tugend — Bringing research to bear on the question of how to balance positive and negative feedback
• Stop Serving the Feedback Sandwich — Adam Grant — Offering advice on giving feedback directly and with humility
• ​login​The Feedback Fallacy — Marcus Buckingham and Ashley Goodall — Describing the human errors that can arise when giving feedback and offering suggestions for addressing them
• ​document​ Actionable feedback: Unlocking the power of learning and performance development — Mark D. Cannon and Robert Witherspoon — Outlining pitfalls in feedback reception from a cognitive, emotional, and learning perspective, and offering clear, actionable advice including case studies and scripts for avoiding these pitfalls

Communicating About Company Culture

• 🔥 The Remarkable Power of Repeating Your Mission and Culture — Dharmesh Shah
• ​login​Why You Should Write Down Your Company’s Unwritten Rules — Karen Niovitch Davis — On the importance and benefits of writing out your company culture
• This Culture Deck Powers the World’s Toughest Work — Mark Arnoldy and First Round Review — Describes what a culture deck is and how to build one one

Trust and Empathy

• ​video​How to build (and rebuild) trust — Frances Frei
• ​login​Making Empathy Central to Your Company Culture — Jamil Zaki
• The Neuroscience of Trust — Paul J. Zak
• There Are Actually 3 Types of Empathy. Here’s How They Differ—and How You Can Develop Them All — Justin Bariso
• How Good Bosses Build Trust and Empathy (and How Bad Bosses Destroy It) — John Brandon
• Working Together is Easier if You Can Distinguish Perspective-Taking from Empathy — Steve Brooks

Inclusion

For more in-depth discussions on diversity and inclusion, check out the Holloway Guide to Raising Venture Capital (“Bias and Discrimination in Fundraising”) and the Holloway Guide to Technical Recruiting and Hiring (“Part II: Diversity and Inclusion in Tech” and “Appendix B: Diversity and Inclusion Reading List”).

Why Inclusion Matters

• Tech Leavers Study — Kapor Center for Social Impact — Finds that “unfair treatment is the single largest driver of turnover affecting all groups, and most acutely affects underrepresented professionals.” Recommends that “diversity and inclusion initiatives can improve culture and reduce turnover—if they are done right.”
• Delivering through diversity — Vivian Hunt, Lareina Yee, Sara Prince, and Sundiatu Dixon-Fyle (McKinsey & Company) — demonstrating that gender and ethnic diversity are clearly correlated with profitability
• The one startup debt you can’t pay back — Phin Barnes — Describing the risks of diversity debt
• ​login​Diversity Doesn’t Stick Without Inclusion — Laura Sherbin and Ripa Rashid

Building an Inclusive Culture

• 🔥 Fixing the Flawed Approach to Diversity — Matt Krentz, Jennifer Garcia-Alonso, Miki Tsusaka, Justin Dean, Frances Brooks Taplett, and Elliot Vaughn (BCG)
• True Diversity Is Intersectional — Ellen K. Pao
• ​login​To Build an Inclusive Culture, Start with Inclusive Meetings — Kathryn Heath and Brenda F. Wensil
• PagerDuty’s Jenn Tejada on recruiting a diverse leadership team and building an inclusive culture — Christine Deakers and Brian Feinstein — Suggesting an official listening tour, muting “the loudest person in the room,” and closing the feedback loop to build inclusive culture

Tools for Promoting Inclusion

• A Rubric for Evaluating Team Members’ Contributions to an Inclusive Culture — Chelsea Troy
• Introducing the Balanced Teams Diversity Assessment tool — Aubrey Blanche

Goal Setting

• Do Your Organizational Goals Fit Your Company Culture? — Beth Thornton
• 🔥 How do you set metrics? — Julie Zhuo
• When Employees Misinterpret Managers — Ben Horowitz — On communicating about goals
• Guide: Set goals with OKRs — re:Work (Google)
• OKR: Should you use them for setting goals? — Claire Lew
• How to Make OKRs Actually Work at Your Startup — Angus Davis

Meeting Challenges

Managing Conflict

• ​audio​Managing a Crisis — Judy Smith and Margit Wennmachers
• ​audio​Crisis Communications — Kim Milosevich and Margit Wennmachers
• Disagree and Commit — Jeff Bezos
• ​document​ Too Hot to Handle? How to Manage Relationship Conflict — Amy Admonson and Diana McLain Smith
• ​audio​​login​Workplace Culture Conflicts — Dan McGinn, Alison Beard, and Alicia Tillman — Note this episode from the “Dear HBR” podcast is freely available from various podcast streaming sources. It was published on August 8, 2019.

Growing From Mistakes

• 🔥 Creating a culture of blameless problem-solving — Hannah Pitstick
• Blameless PostMortems and a Just Culture — John Allspaw
• Postmortem culture: How you can learn from failure — John Lunney, Sue Lueder, and Gary O’Connor
• Why managers should apologise — Cheryl Meyer

Building and Scaling Company Culture

• 🔥 Creating Culture — Andy Dunn
• ​login​6 Rules for Building and Scaling Company Culture — Anthony K. Tjan

Building a Company Culture

• How to Influence Company Culture — Claire Lew
• The Complete Guide to Establishing a Collaborative Company Culture — Claire Millard
• ​video​How to Start a Startup #10: Culture, Part 1 — Alfred Lin and Brian Chesky — Describing the process of building culture at Zappos and AirBnB
  • Transcript
• You hire for culture fit, but have you established what your culture is? — Kristi Riordan — On establishing your company culture before trying to recruit and hire on the basis of culture
• Team Purpose & Culture — Hyper Island — Breaking down the process of identifying a team or company culture into seven steps

Scaling a Company Culture

• ​audio​Scaling Companies and Culture — Ben Horowitz and Lars Dalgaard
• ​video​Scaling Culture — Jason Kilar and Y Combinator

Pitfalls in Establishing and Expanding Company Culture

• Cultural Differences — Fred Wilson — Emphasizing the durability of culture and the importance of establishing it early
• ​login​We’re Thinking About Organizational Culture All Wrong — John Traphagan — On the multifaceted nature of culture and the exercise of power involved in attempting to impose a culture
• 37 Signals: You don’t create a culture — Jason Fried — Arguing that culture is built through actions over time, and shouldn’t be forced through an artificial project
• ​login​Changing Company Culture Requires a Movement, Not a Mandate — Bryan Walker and Sarah A. Soule
• The Old Guard — Michael Lopp — On old guard/new guard tension

Hiring and Culture Fit

• 🔥 Your Company Culture is Who You Hire, Fire, and Promote — Cameron Sepah

Hiring and Retaining

• Recruiting & Culture — Chad Dickerson
• ​video​How to Start a Startup #11: Hiring & Culture, Part 2 — Patrick Collison, John Collison, and Ben Silbermann
  • Transcript available
• How To Keep Your Best Programmers — Erik Dietrich
• The Elves Leave Middle Earth — Sodas Are No Longer Free — Steve Blank — How the transition to professional management can have unintended consequences as a startup matures
• Holloway Guide to Technical Recruiting and Hiring — An in-depth resource for all aspects of hiring for software engineering-related roles

Hiring for “Culture Fit”

• Hire For Cultural Fit Over Competence — Brad Feld
• Culture and Fit — Fred Wilson
• What companies mean by culture fit — Ammon Bartram
• ​paid​Does Hiring for “Culture Fit” Perpetuate Bias? — Mel Hennigan and Lindsay Evans
• The Dangers of Hiring for Cultural Fit — Sue Shellenbarger

Alternatives to “Culture Fit”

• The End of Culture Fit — Lars Schmidt
• Hiring: It’s About Cultural Contribution, Not Cultural Fit — Diego Rodriguez
• Go For Culture Add, Not Culture Fit — Brad Feld

Firing and Leadership Changes

Firing

• Firing — Chris Dixon
• How to Fire Someone: How to Decide, When to do it, and How to be Guilt-free — Eric Jorgenson — An overview of many perspectives on firing
• Firing: How I Do the Hardest Thing as an Entrepreneur — Eric Turnbull

When and Why to Fire

• Values-based Firing — Gokul Rajaram
• It’s Never Too Early to Fire — Lars Dalgaard
• We Fired Our Top Talent. Best Decision We Ever Made. — Jonathan Solórzano-Hamilton
  • I think it’s worth asking what in your company culture allowed this to happen. — Moodthy Alghorairi
• When the Team Revolts — Jason Lemkin — Arguing for firing employees at start-ups that cause the rest of the team to “revolt”

How to Fire

• Asking an Employee to Leave the Company — Fred Wilson
• 🔥 How to Handle Layoffs — Jason Calacanis and Erick Schonfeld
• Read the Netflix CEO’s excellent memo about firing an executive who used the N-word — Heather Landy

Leadership Changes

• ​paid​Tech Founders’ Absolute Power Is Destroying Company Culture — Ellen Pao
• Navigating the “CEO question” — Mike Hirshland — When founders should remain CEO
• I’ve seen the Promised Land. And I might not get there with you. — Steve Blank
• ’Tis The Season To Change The CEO — Furqan Nazeeri — Advising startup CEOs on anticipating and reacting to possible action to replace them
• Leadership Lapses: When Is Firing the Right Response? — Knowledge@Wharton — Offering alternatives to firing individuals in leadership positions

Office Space

• Organizational Culture Implications on Office Design and Employee Performance — Stephanie Heiple
• ​document​ How to Create a Successful Organizational Culture: Build It—Literally — Haworth
• How Corporate Culture Influences Workplace Design — Susan Foong and John Chapman
• Your Office Space is the Face of Your Startup — David Beisel — The importance of office space configuration

Open Plan Offices Pros and Cons

• Are Open-Plan Offices Really The Way Forward? — Vaibhav Joshi
• Everyone hates open offices. Here’s why they still exist — Katherine Schwab
• ​login​How to Make Sure People Won’t Hate Your New Open Office Plan — Brandi Pearce and Pamela Hinds
• The impact of the “open” workspace on human collaboration — Ethan S. Bernstein and Stephen Turban

Company Culture with Distributed Teams

• Creating a distributed company culture — Katy Atherholt
• The Power of “In Person” — Why Distributed Teams are Less Effective — Mark Suster — A perspective on which functions need to be co-located

Remote Teams

• The Difference Between “Remote” and “Remote-First” — Paul Farnell
• What We’ve Learned Building a Remote Culture — Nick Francis
• How to Build Culture in a Remote Team — Wade Foster
• Six Ways to Build a Strong Remote Company Culture — Jamon Holmgren
• ​login​Ideas for Helping Remote Colleagues Bond — Kuty Shalev

Working with Contractors

• Outsourcing — Fred Wilson
  • Outsourcing vs. Offshoring — Fred Wilson
• Contractors Are People Too: How to Enhance the Experience of Company Culture Beyond Full-Time, In-House Employees — Glassdoor

The Risks of Getting Culture Wrong

Case Study: GitHub

• Julie Ann Horvath Describes Sexism And Intimidation Behind Her GitHub Exit — Alex Wilhelm and Alexia Tsotsis
• GitHub Founder Steps Down After Harassment Probe — Robert McMillan

Case Study: Uber

• Values and Culture — Fred Wilson
• How Uber’s Hard-Charging Corporate Culture Left Employees Drained — Caroline O’Donovan and Priya Anand

Case Study: Volkswagen

• ​paid​The Volkswagen scandal shows that corporate culture matters — Robert Armstrong
• ​paid​The Volkswagen scandal shows that corporate culture matters — Robert Armstrong
• CEO says changing VW culture proving tougher than expected — Andreas Cremer

Case Study: Wells Fargo

• Former Wells Fargo Employees Describe Toxic Sales Culture, Even at HQ — Chris Arnold
• ​paid​How Wells Fargo’s Cutthroat Corporate Culture Allegedly Drove Bankers to Fraud — Bethany McLean
• Wells Fargo report gives inside look at the culture that crushed the bank’s reputation — Wilfred Frost
  • ​document​ Independent Directors of the Board of Wells Fargo & Company Sales Practices Investigation Report — We recommend you read the Overview and Executive Summary in particular.

Controversial Takes

​controversy​ These are some popular posts that are controversial. Many disagree with asking colleagues or employees to work for equity only, at all hours, or in non-diverse cultures—but these articles have sparked much debate.

• Cult Creation I and II — Steve Newcomb
• Where the Happy Talk About Corporate Culture Is Wrong — Cliff Oxford
• Peter Thiel’s CS183: Startup — Class 5 Notes Essay — The Mechanics of Mafia — Blake Masters, Stephen Cohen, and Max Levchin

Further Resources

Reference Cases

• ​book​Bridgewater’s Principles
• ​book​Zappos Culture Book
• ​slides​Netflix Culture Deck
  • ​login​How Netflix Reinvented HR — Patty McCord
  • The Woman Behind Netflix’s Culture Deck — Patty McCord
  • Culture at Netflix — More up to date than “Netflix Culture Deck”
  • ​audio​Netflix’s Reed Hastings in Culture Shock — Reid Hoffman and Reed Hastings
• ​slides​Hubspot Culture Deck
  • Culture Code: Creating A Company YOU Love — Dharmesh Shah
  • Does HubSpot Walk The Talk On Its Culture Code? — Dharmesh Shah — Item by item, the extent to which HubSpot lives up to its own culture code
• ​slides​The Asana Culture Code
• Buffer’s Values
  • ​slides​Version 0.2 (2013)
  • ​slides​Version 0.3 (2013)
  • ​slides​Version 0.4 (2014)
  • ​slides​Version 0.5 (2015)
  • ​slides​Version 0.6
• ​document​ Valve Employee Handbook
• Amazon’s Leadership Principles
• Twilio’s Values
  • Draw The Owl and Other Company Values You Didn’t Know You Should Have — Jeff Lawson — When/why/how to articulate company values
• Atlassian’s Values
• A quick guide to Stripe’s culture
• The Zaarly Handbook
• The Culture Deck — David Siegel — A huge collection of culture content
• ​slides​Patreon’s Culture Deck
• ​slides​Spotify’s Culture Deck
• ​slides​Hootsuite’s Culture Deck
• ​slides​Etsy’s Culture Deck

Books

• ​book​Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead — Laszlo Bock
• ​book​Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies — Jim Collins and Jerry I. Porras
• ​book​Just Culture: Balancing Safety and Accountability — Sidney Dekker
• ​book​REWORK — Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson — Rethinking assumptions about how businesses succeed
• ​book​Culture’s Consequences — Geert Hofstede
• ​book​Reinventing Organizations — Frederic Laloux
• ​book​The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else In Business — Patrick M. Lencioni
• Books on collaboration and empathy
  • ​book​Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success — Adam Grant
  • ​book​Practical Empathy: For Collaboration and Creativity in Your Work — Indi Young
• Books on leadership
  • ​book​Startup CEO — Matt Blumberg — Advice for CEOs of scaling startups, focusing on a range of topics, including managing culture, talent management, working with your board, etc.
  • ​book​The Manager’s Path: A Guide for Tech Leaders Navigating Growth and Change — Camille Fournier
  • ​book​First, Break All the Rules: What the World’s Greatest Managers Do Differently — Jim Harter
  • ​book​Resilient Management — Laura Hogan
  • ​book​Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity — Kim Scott
  • ​book​Organizational Culture and Leadership — Edgar H. Schein
  • ​book​Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action — Simon Sinek
  • ​book​The Making of a Manager: What to Do When Everyone Looks to You — Julie Zhuo
• Books on values
  • ​book​Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion and Purpose — Tony Hsieh — Lessons from Zappos’s CEO
  • ​book​The Nordstrom Way: The Inside Story of America’s #1 Customer Service Company — Robert Spector and Patrick D. McCarthy

Blogs

• 6Q Blog
• Bessemer Venture Partners’ Atlas
• Corporate Culture Pros Blog
• CultureIQ Blog
• Culture University
• Gotham Culture Blog
• NOBL Academy
• Walking the Talk Blog

Free Tools

• Key Values — A tool for assessing companies’ expressed and lived values
• A Rubric for Evaluating Team Members’ Contributions to an Inclusive Culture — Chelsea Troy
• Balanced Teams Diversity Assessment — Atlassian
• Values Creator — Hi5 Technologies
• Implicit Association Test (IAT) — Harvard University
• Leadership Blindspot Survey: Self-Assessment — Princeton Management Consulting Group