What You Do Is Who You Are

When Ben Horowitz first became a CEO, he discovered a troubling reality that many leaders face. Despite hiring talented people and setting clear goals, his company's culture was becoming a chaotic patchwork of unintended behaviors. Managers were screaming at employees, others were neglecting to give feedback, and some weren't even returning emails. Most alarmingly, a middle manager had been promoted despite being a compulsive liar, inadvertently sending the message that dishonesty was acceptable. This experience forced Horowitz to confront a fundamental question that haunts every organization: How do you deliberately create the culture you want, rather than accidentally getting the one you don't?

The answer, Horowitz discovered, lies not in corporate mission statements or inspirational posters, but in understanding culture as it truly operates—as a set of actions and decisions that people make when no one is looking. Through studying history's most effective culture builders, from Toussaint Louverture's transformation of slave culture in Haiti to the samurai's seven-hundred-year reign in Japan, this exploration reveals practical techniques for designing cultures that align with your deepest values and strategic needs. The journey ahead offers not just insights into what culture is, but concrete methods for shaping it into a force that can transform organizations and the people within them.

In 1791, an extraordinary transformation began on the Caribbean island of Saint-Domingue, where conditions for enslaved people were so brutal that the death rate exceeded the birth rate, turning the entire colony into what historian C.L.R. James called a slaughterhouse. Yet from this seemingly hopeless environment emerged Toussaint Louverture, a former slave who would orchestrate the only successful slave revolt in human history. Born frail and called "Sickly Stick" by his family, Louverture grew into a formidable leader who could ride 125 miles in a day and survive on just bananas and water. More remarkably, he possessed an unusual insight that would prove revolutionary: culture, not color, determined behavior.

Louverture's genius lay in recognizing that broken cultures don't win wars. Slavery had created a culture of suspicion, short-term thinking, and internal division among the oppressed. To build an effective fighting force, he would need to systematically reprogram this culture while preserving its strengths. He converted the slaves' voodoo songs into an encrypted communication system that European forces couldn't understand, allowing coordinated attacks across vast distances. He established shocking rules that made people ask "why?"—such as forbidding married officers from having concubines, which reinforced that keeping your word was the foundation of trust in his army.

Perhaps most counterintuitively, Louverture forgave the plantation owners after victory, allowing them to keep their land while requiring them to pay workers and live among them. This decision flew in the face of his soldiers' desire for revenge, but it demonstrated his highest cultural priority: building a prosperous, sustainable society rather than merely winning battles. When the wider world saw former slaves treating their former oppressors with dignity while maintaining order and productivity, it forced a fundamental reexamination of assumptions about race and capability. Louverture had proven that with the right culture, any group could rise to extraordinary heights—a lesson that would eventually help topple the entire system of slavery across the Western world.

The samurai of ancient Japan understood something that modern organizations often miss: culture is not a set of beliefs, but a set of practices. For seven hundred years, from 1186 to 1868, the warrior class ruled Japan through bushido—the way of the warrior—which was built on actions rather than aspirations. Their morning ritual perfectly embodied this principle. Each day, samurai would meticulously groom themselves, bathing in open air, shaving their foreheads, oiling their hair, and polishing their fingernails with pumice stone, all because they lived with the constant awareness that they might die that day. They refused to be caught unprepared, knowing that being slain with an unkempt appearance would bring dishonor even in death.

This meditation on mortality was not morbid but practical, designed to bring crystal clarity to every action. The famous line from Hagakure, "The way of the warrior is to be found in dying," meant that by accepting the worst possible outcome, warriors became free to act with total commitment. They defined eight specific virtues—rectitude, courage, honor, loyalty, benevolence, politeness, self-control, and veracity—and created detailed scenarios to show how these virtues should guide behavior in every conceivable situation. When defining politeness, they elevated it beyond mere etiquette to become the most profound expression of love and respect for others.

The samurai's approach to ethics was particularly sophisticated. Rather than vague principles, they provided detailed case studies, such as the story of finding gold left by a deceased acquaintance when no one else knows about it. They explored three different motivations for doing right—genuine goodness, shame, or fear of consequences—but concluded that the motivation mattered less than the action itself. This comprehensive system worked because it addressed not just what to do, but why to do it, and how to do it in countless specific situations. The result was a culture so robust that it shaped Japanese society for nearly a millennium and continues to influence Japanese culture today, proving that when you build culture on actions rather than aspirations, it can endure through centuries of change.

Born as Temujin around 1162, the future Genghis Khan began life as the ultimate outsider—abandoned by his tribe, enslaved as a child, and forced to survive by eating dogs and mice in the harsh Mongolian steppes. Yet this experience of rejection became the foundation for history's most successful inclusion strategy. When Temujin's own tribal relatives, the Tayichiud, made him a slave, he was eventually rescued by a poor family that hid him under fleeces when his captors came searching. This kindness from strangers, contrasted with betrayal from blood relatives, taught him a revolutionary principle that would transform the ancient world: judge people by their actions, not their bloodlines.

Traditional steppe society was rigidly hierarchical, with nobles determined by birth and proximity to the khan. But when Temujin became Genghis Khan in 1206, he systematically dismantled these barriers. He made it a capital offense for his own family members to become leaders without being elected, established a true meritocracy where shepherds could become generals, and created new "tribes" of a thousand men each that cut across old clan loyalties. Most radically, he didn't just recruit from conquered peoples—he treated them so well that they became more loyal to him than to their original leaders. After defeating various tribes, he had his own mother adopt children from conquered clans, symbolically making former enemies into family members.

This inclusive approach extended beyond military organization to create history's first truly multicultural empire. The nineteen men who swore the famous Baljuna oath with Genghis Khan came from nine different tribes and practiced multiple religions—Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and shamanism. Rather than imposing Mongol customs, Genghis adopted the best practices from every culture he encountered, using Chinese engineers to build siege weapons, Persian administrators to run governments, and scholars from across his domain to advance knowledge. When his engineers combined Chinese gunpowder with Islamic flamethrowers and European metalworking to create the cannon, they demonstrated the innovative power that emerges when diverse talents truly collaborate. Genghis Khan's empire succeeded not despite its diversity, but because of it—proving that inclusion, when done with genuine commitment and systematic support, becomes a source of incomparable strength.

James White entered Michigan's prison system at nineteen, knowing he might never leave. The culture that greeted him was designed to break spirits and perpetuate violence, where showing weakness could mean death and survival required joining one of five dominant gangs. He chose the Melanics, a relatively small organization that compensated for its size through fierce loyalty and discipline. But as White rose through the ranks—eventually taking the name Shaka Senghor—he discovered that even well-intentioned cultures can produce unintended consequences. When a member's daughter was murdered by someone under the protection of the rival Nation of Islam, Senghor faced an impossible choice: honor his gang's loyalty code by ordering a killing that would likely trigger a prison war, or betray his principles and lose credibility with his own people.

Senghor chose to honor the code, ordering the execution that his principles demanded. But the aftermath forced him to confront a disturbing realization: through meticulous adherence to his organization's values, he had become exactly what he had never intended to be—a savage. This moment of recognition sparked a profound transformation. Rather than abandoning his leadership role, Senghor began systematically changing his gang's culture from within. He instituted mandatory study sessions using books like "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" and "Think and Grow Rich," but more importantly, he changed how conflicts were resolved. Instead of meeting external aggression with automatic retaliation, he taught his members to consider the broader impact of their actions on both their organization and the larger prison community.

The transformation wasn't easy or quick—it took years of constant reinforcement through daily meals together, regular study sessions, and careful modeling of the behaviors he wanted to see. But eventually, Senghor had converted his gang from a group focused on violence and intimidation into one dedicated to education and genuine brotherhood. The techniques he developed—constant contact to reinforce cultural change, making ethics explicit rather than assumed, and demonstrating cultural priorities through difficult decisions—translate directly to corporate environments. Whether you're leading a prison gang or a tech startup, the fundamental challenge remains the same: how do you get people to behave according to your highest values when you're not watching, and how do you evolve that culture when you realize it's taking you somewhere you don't want to go.

When Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, the company was ninety days from bankruptcy, with market share that had plummeted from thirteen percent to just over three percent. Industry experts insisted that Apple needed to abandon its integrated approach and license its operating system to other manufacturers, following the Microsoft model that had dominated the PC era. But Jobs saw the situation differently. Rather than adopting someone else's successful formula, he recognized that Apple's core strength had always been the seamless integration of hardware and software that enabled breakthrough user experiences. He kept what worked—the perfectionist design culture and the employees who understood it—while ruthlessly cutting everything that didn't support this vision, eliminating most products and focusing on just a few that could showcase Apple's unique capabilities.

This approach of building on authentic strengths rather than copying others' methods reflects a fundamental truth about sustainable culture creation: it must emerge from who you actually are, not who you think you should be. When Mark Zuckerberg created Facebook's original motto "Move fast and break things," it worked because it aligned perfectly with the company's strategic need for speed in competing against MySpace, and with Zuckerberg's own personality as someone willing to take risks for rapid progress. But when Facebook's strategic priorities shifted toward becoming a platform for external developers, the same motto became counterproductive—partners couldn't build stable businesses on an unstable foundation—so Zuckerberg evolved it to "Move fast with stable infrastructure."

The most effective cultural transformations happen when leaders first understand their own personalities and strategic needs, then design practices that reinforce both. This requires honest self-assessment about which parts of your personality should be amplified in the organization and which should be counteracted. It demands shocking rules that make people ask "why?" because memorable rules program lasting behavior. Most importantly, it requires making ethics explicit rather than assumed, because ethical behavior often conflicts with other objectives and won't emerge naturally without clear guidance. The leaders who master this process—from ancient revolutionaries to modern CEOs—share one crucial insight: culture is not about the values you put on the wall, but about the actions people take when no one is looking, and shaping those actions requires the same systematic attention you would give to any other critical business process.

The most profound lesson from history's greatest culture builders is that lasting organizational transformation happens not through inspiration but through systematic behavior change. Whether Toussaint Louverture was converting songs into military communication systems, samurai were polishing their fingernails in preparation for death, or Genghis Khan was having his mother adopt children from conquered tribes, they understood that culture lives in daily practices, not grand proclamations. Each of these leaders faced the same fundamental challenge that confronts every modern leader: how to get people to consistently embody your highest values and most important priorities when you're not there to supervise them.

The path forward requires embracing three essential truths. First, your culture will be defined by what you actually do, especially in difficult moments when principles compete with convenience. Second, building an inclusive, high-performing culture demands seeing people for who they truly are rather than the categories they represent, and then systematically removing barriers that prevent their best contributions. Finally, culture is never finished—it requires constant attention, periodic renewal, and the courage to change direction when you realize your current path isn't leading where you want to go. The leaders who master these principles don't just build successful organizations; they create environments where people become the best versions of themselves while achieving extraordinary results together.