Quotes & Sayings About Company Culture

In ancient Rome, when a victorious general paraded through the streets, legend has it that he was sometimes trailed by a servant whose job it was to repeat to him, " Memento Mori": Remember you will die. A reminder of mortality would help the hero keep things in perspective, instill some humility. Job's memento mori had been delivered by his doctors, but it did not instill humility. Instead he roared back after his recovery with even more passion. The illness reminded him that he had nothing to lose, so he should forge ahead full speed. " He came back on a mission," said Cook. " Even though he was now running a large company, he kept making bold moves that I don't think anybody else would have done. — Walter Isaacson

It seems like those of us who run a business can't go five minutes without encountering the term "company culture." The phrase is always uttered with extreme adoration, yet the very concept seems as nebulous as it is elusive. — Leah Busque

To be an enduring, great company, you have to build a mechanism for preventing or solving problems that will long outlast any one individual leader. — Howard Schultz

Every great brand goes back to a courageous individual who dared to say 'NO' to the status quo. — David Brier

The brand is just a lagging indicator of a company's culture. — Tony Hsieh

History is filled with inferior brands outselling superior ones thanks to better branding. Only superior branding has the power to overcome and reverse this (and superior products and services deserve superior branding). — David Brier

Cookie cutters are for baking, not branding. — David Brier

Beyond brand, culture can help drive your product itself by creating the conditions for the idea generation that is and will continue to be the lifeblood of any company. — Leah Busque

Every milestone in the history of the company, even when forecast with heaps of hoopla, was ultimately played out according to some secret timeline of geologic tedium, so that it was drained of all interest and drama well before it took place and afterward went all but unnoticed. — Thomas Ligotti

We have a very open culture at the company, where we foster a lot of interaction between not just me and people but between everyone else. It's an open floor plan. People have these desks where no one really has an office. I mean, I have a room where I meet with people. But it has all glass, so everyone can see into it and see what's going on. — Mark Zuckerberg

That said, there is a tendency to help the large industrial conglomerate more quickly than the small company you have never heard of. That is something in the culture we are trying to change. — Lawrence Eagleburger

For me, I've learned about what it means to focus on a culture, to build social responsibility, and the idea of a company as a super-organism. — Biz Stone

Somehow no really terrible Western ideas like, say, witch-burning or communism ever get mentioned, though they seem just as plausibly the products of Judaeo-Christian culture as the spirit of capitalism. In any case, while culture may instil norms, institutions create incentives. Britons versed in much the same culture behaved very differently depending on whether they emigrated to New England or worked for the East India Company in Bengal. In the former case we find inclusive institutions, in the latter extractive ones. — Niall Ferguson

at Pixar, Steve couldn't shape the culture. He wasn't the founder, and even as owner, he could not change the company to reflect his image and sensibilities. It already had a culture. It already had a leader. Its cohesive and collaborative team knew exactly what it wanted to do. — Brent Schlender

If it's not your style to stretch and go the extra mile to make sure our customer experience is great, you're going to have an allergic reaction to this company. You probably won't stay. If you do try and stay, but can't adapt to the culture then it will reject you like a virus from a healthy immune system. — Jeff Bezos

A long time ago I discovered that when employees are passionate about their work, customers are passionate about the company. Kevin Sheridan knows that secret too. His insights on finding the right people and getting them engaged can change your culture forever. — Quint Studer

You can attract the best smart creatives with factors beyond money: the great things they can do, the people they'll work with, the responsibility and opportunities they'll be given, the inspiring company culture and values, and yes, maybe even free food and happy dogs sitting desk-side. — Eric Schmidt

Look at every 'revolutionary' brand or category killer, it had an app, or a feature, or a functionality, or a user experience nobody else at that point could offer. I refer to this as 'the Killer App' principle. — David Brier

The stronger the culture, the less corporate process a company needs. When the culture is strong, you can trust everyone to do the right thing. People can be independent and autonomous. They can be entrepreneurial. — Brian Chesky

I took a dozen of our top managers to Argentina, to the windswept mountains of the real Patagonia, for a walkabout. In the course of roaming around those wild lands, we asked ourselves why we were in business and what kind of business we wanted Patagonia to be. A billion-dollar company? Okay, but not if it meant we had to make products we couldn't be proud of. And we discussed what we could do to help stem the environmental harm we caused as a company. We talked about the values we had in common, and the shared culture that had brought everyone to Patagonia, Inc., and not another company. — Yvon Chouinard

Ricardo Semler wrote a most interesting book about an including business culture (1995). He describes a Brazilian company that manufactured customized pumps. — Charles J. Pellerin

Healthy companies know that they have to allow people to fail without assessing blame. They have to do that or else no one will take on anything that's not a sure bet. Healthy companies know that, but Culture of Fear companies do not. In a Culture of Fear company, failure must be rewarded with punishment. ("What would we be, we sinful creatures, without fear?") A typical punishment is that you get fired. If the people above you are insufficiently powerful, some of them may get fired as well. This creates a powerful incentive to pass responsibility for failure on by blaming someone outside the organization. — Tom DeMarco

Why did you spend your whole life working in an insurance company? You should have been a painter, a musician, well, I don't know. Why didn't you follow your calling?"

Don Rigoberto nodded and reflected a moment before answering.

"Because I was a coward, son," he finally murmured. "Because I lacked faith in myself. I never believed I had the talent to be a real artist. But maybe that was an excuse for not trying. I decided not to be a creator but only a consumer of art, a dilettante of culture. Because I was a coward is the sad truth. So now you know. Don't follow my example. Whatever your calling is, follow it as far as you can and don't do what I did, don't betray it. — Mario Vargas-Llosa

To claim that America's "culture of violence" is responsible for school shootings is tantamount to cigarette company executives declaring that environmental pollution is the chief cause of lung cancer. — Stephen King

The question is not how to get managers' emotional commitment but why manager's don't give it even if they like their company. — Stan Slap

Company culture is the backbone of any successful organization. — Gary Vaynerchuk

When it comes to branding and the ever-changing social media phenomenon, you're not a mushroom. In other words, you shouldn't be kept in the dark and fed a pile of...well, you get the idea. — David Brier

If you think about the history of the PC industry, the PC industry has essentially been nothing but acquisitions by one company or another. Dell is the outlier. Dell built its own culture. They automated themselves to be the most efficient manufacturer. — Eric Schmidt

Building a business is a creative act. Few of us realize when we start out that we are creating not only a company but a culture. That's because it's usually not planned. It just happens. While everyone is focused on something else, making sales, providing service, sending out invoices, a little community springs up. It has its own unspoken customs, traditions, modes of dress and speech, and rules of behavior. By the time you become aware of it, the culture is often well established and it will probably be a reflection of your personality. — Jack Daly

Evidently, one thing seems to have more value in direct proportion to whether or not we feel we have the freedoms, joys or conveniences of that thing. — David Brier

It may well be that what we have hitherto
understood as architecture, and what we are
beginning to understand of technology, are
incompatible disciplines. The architect who
proposes to run with technology knows now
that he will be in fast company, and that in
order to keep up he may have to discard his
whole cultural load, including the professional
garments by which he is recognized as an
architect. If, on the other hand, he decides not
to do this, he may find that a technological
culture has decided to go on without him. — Rener Banham

There are three points I used to help a gourmet chocolatier increase sales 300% in a single month as well as a Midwest city to increase tourism guests 500% in 12 months. — David Brier

On the Facebook side, I think it's a bit of an evolution, in that that company, which has clearly done amazing things, was, I believe, as an outsider looking in, was founded on a culture that was obsessive about the users. And they built a service that is very valuable for users, and that is to be applauded. — Jason Kilar

A service culture doesn't happen by accident. The company is always a reflection of the person at the helm. Their attitude, their values, and their commitment to service excellence will drive the actions of others in the organization. Always has ... always will. — Mac Anderson

The competitive advantage of the twenty-first century is increasingly derived from hard-to-copy intangible assets such as company culture and leadership effectiveness. — Scott Keller

One of his motivating passions was to build a lasting company. At age twelve, when he got a summer job at Hewlett-Packard, he learned that a properly run company could spawn innovation far more than any single creative individual. " I discovered that the best innovation is sometimes the company, the way you organize a company," he recalled." The whole notion of how you build a company is fascinating. When i got the chance to come back to Apple, I realized that I would be useless without the company, and that's why I decided to stay and rebuild it. — Walter Isaacson

Environmental policies are not just about good publicity; they are about responding to the moral imperative to address both climate change and resource depletion ... A company culture that is based on measuring everything in purely financial terms will be crippled by a high turnover of staff, customers and suppliers — Toby Robins

Since most startups operate at a break-neck pace, with a concept to prove or a product to launch within a rapidly shortening runway of financing, company culture often gets shoved aside. This is a big, big mistake: Nobody serious about their business should put culture in the corner. — Leah Busque

One's own best self. For centuries, this was the key concept behind any essential definition of friendship: that one's friend is a virtuous being who speaks to the virtue in oneself. How foreign such a concept to the children of the therapeutic culture! Today we do not look to see, much less affirm, our best selves in one another. To the contrary, it is the openness with which we admit to our emotional incapacities - the fear, the anger, the humiliation - that excites contemporary bonds of friendship. Nothing draws us closer to one another than the degree to which we face our deepest shame openly in one another's company... What we want is to feel known, warts and all: the more warts the better. It is the great illusion of our culture that what we confess to is who we are. — Vivian Gornick

You need to have a culture where people have very high quality standards in everything the company does, but still move quickly. — Sam Altman

I described the CEO job as knowing what to do and getting the company to do what you want. Designing a proper company culture will help you get your company to do what you want in certain important areas for a very long time. — Ben Horowitz

The first thing to look for when searching for a great employee is somebody with a personality that fits with your company culture. Most skills can be learned, but it is difficult to train people on their personality. If you can find people who are fun, friendly, caring and love helping others, you are on to a winner. — Richard Branson

Goodlife was originally a ski management/athlete management company. I have a couple friends who are sponsored for skiing and my manager linked up with their manager. We worked out a deal, because they wanted to branch out into music and culture. — SonReal

The biggest mistake brands make are trying to "sell their stuff" rather than clarifying what people are actually buying. — David Brier

It becomes a question of 'How do we convey our differentiation instantaneously?' and drive a wedge between any apparent (or assumed) sameness in the marketplace. — David Brier

Having a clear mission and making sure you know that mission and making sure that mission comes through the company is probably the most important thing you can do for both culture and values. — Brian Chesky

Brand growth and dominance is created by having the highest brand value, not the lowest price tag. — David Brier

Any good business is a hobby. We have an integrated company culture, and I can honestly say that many people who come here to work make Yandex a central part of their lives. — Arkady Volozh

No company has a culture, every company is a culture — Peter Thiel

A French conversation starter is more subtle. Work is considered boring, money is out of the question, politics comes later (and only in like-minded company). Vacation is a safe bet - it's no exaggeration to say that French people are always going on, returning from, or planning a holiday. But more often than not, social class in France is judged by your relationship to culture. — Elizabeth Bard

You know, as most entrepreneurs do, that a company is only as good as its people. The hard part is actually building the team that will embody your company's culture and propel you forward. — Kathryn Minshew

The company culture is about being human, being good to other people. We recently did a survey with our drivers. 48 out of 50 said that they preferred driving with Lyft because they said that passengers were friendlier. — Logan Green

I haven't given up me and I get to be a big part of my girls' lives. It's an amazing feeling that what I put into my business, I get out of it.- Jennifer Saint Jean, Itty Bitty Bag Company — Holly Hurd

Why is it there's no aisle in a grocery or department in a store or menu on a website for "average stuff" or "beige products"? FACT: People never got passionate about mediocre and average. While consumers and clients can find "best deals" and "natural foods" and "artisan goods," one doesn't find an aisle or a website menu tab offering "average stuff" without excelling in something (which might explain that while vanilla is necessary for the ice cream sundae, it's the hot fudge we all crave and talk about). — David Brier

Company culture is a religion, not a sermon. — Gary Vaynerchuk

A team may have some great players, but typically, the team that works best together does the best. I look at running Broadcom in the same way. We have a culture where people have different skill sets, but they are happy to leverage their skills to help others and to help the company. — Henry Samueli

There is no one, right way to design or develop anything. To a large degree, it needs to reflect the culture - especially the innovation culture - of a company. — Nathan Shedroff

I was not above filching empty candy bar wrappers from
trash bins at the park or picking up the back cards of batteries from
store parking lots. My children all sported Hershey shirts but ate
very few of the required candy bars themselves to get them. Trips
to the pool were the most rewarding, where candy was sold at the
concession stand and the trash receptacles were overflowing with
wrappers. On neighborhood trash day, the children and I walked
up and down the alleys, where we confiscated extra Pampers points
to send in for savings bonds and toys. Even the tennis shoes my
children wore on these jaunts were obtained free from the Huggies
diaper company. — Mary Potter Kenyon

Jobs described Mike Markkula's maxim that a good company must "impute"- it must convey its values and importance in everything it does, from packaging to marketing. Johnson loved it. It definitely applied to a company's stores. " The store will become the most powerful physical expression of the brand," he predicted. He said that when he was young he had gone to the wood-paneled, art-filled mansion-like store that Ralph Lauren had created at Seventy-second and Madison in Manhattan. " Whenever I buy a polo shirt, I think of that mansion, which was a physical expression of Ralph's ideals," Johnson said. " Mickey Drexler did that with the Gap. You couldn't think of a Gap product without thinking of the Great Gap store with the clean space and wood floors and white walls and folded merchandise. — Walter Isaacson

What was remarkable was that associating with a computer and electronics company was the best way for a rock band to seem hip and appeal to young people. Bono later explained that not all corporate sponsorships were deals with the devil. "Let's have a look," he told Greg Kot, the Chicago Tribune music critic. "The 'devil' here is a bunch of creative minds, more creative than a lot of people in rock bands. The lead singer is Steve Jobs. These men have helped design the most beautiful art object in music culture since the electric guitar. That's the iPod. The job of art is to chase ugliness away. — Walter Isaacson

A critical question to ask when bringing in a new CEO to take the reins of a company you started is: Do you want someone who will maintain company culture or reinvent it? — Ryan Holmes

Your personal core values define who you are, and a company's core values ultimately define the company's character and brand. For individuals, character is destiny. For organizations, culture is destiny. — Tony Hsieh

Public hangings are teaching moments. Every company has to do it. A teaching moment is worth a thousand CEO speeches. CEOs can talk and blab each day about culture, but the employees all know who the jerks are. They could name the jerks for you. It's just cultural. People just don't want to do it. — Jack Welch

Most companies' culture just happens; no one plans it. That can work, but it means leaving a critical component of your success to chance. Elsewhere in this book we preach the value of experimentation and the virtues of failure, but culture is perhaps the one important aspect of a company where failed experiments hurt. — Eric Schmidt

Ultimately, what any company does when it is successful is merely a lagging indicator of its existing culture. — Satya Nadella

For a startup to overcome obstacles and succeed, it must foster limitless thinking. By hiring students into their first career job, you get to set their framework for how a company functions and instill them with your values for your company's culture. — Jay Samit

You can build a much more wonderful company on love than you can on fear. — Kip Tindell

Where has this book been? The Culture Engine demystifies the what and how of driving your company's culture to produce transformational business outcomes. Chris Edmonds operationalizes culture while offering practical tools necessary to align your people and gain profound competitive advantage. — Joseph Michelli

I never learned the rules in the first place. To change the game is at the heart of what Virgin stands for, so the company culture has always been: "Don't sweat it: rules were meant to be broken." — Richard Branson

One day I asked him if he had come to enjoy the process of building companies, now that he was trying to do so for a third time. "Uh, no," he started, as if I were a fool. But if he didn't enjoy building companies, he sure had a thoughtful and convincing way of describing why he kept doing it. "The only purpose, for me, in building a company is so that that company can make products. One is a means to the other. Over a period of time you realize that building a very strong company and a very strong foundation of talent and culture in a company is essential to keep making great products. — Brent Schlender

A good many times I have been present at gatherings of people who, by the standards of the traditional culture, are thought highly educated and who have with considerable gusto been expressing their incredulity of scientists. Once or twice I have been provoked and have asked the company how many of them could describe the Second Law of Thermodynamics. The response was cold: it was also negative. Yet I was asking something which is the scientific equivalent of: Have you read a work of Shakespeare's?
I now believe that if I had asked an even simpler question
such as, What do you mean by mass, or acceleration, which is the scientific equivalent of saying, Can you read?
not more than one in ten of the highly educated would have felt that I was speaking the same language. So the great edifice of modern physics goes up, and the majority of the cleverest people in the western world have about as much insight into it as their neolithic ancestors would have had. — C.P. Snow

One thing I've always loved about the culture at Microsoft is there is nobody who is tougher on us, in terms of what we need to learn and do better, than the people in the company itself. You can walk down these halls, and they'll tell you, 'We need to do usability better, push this or that frontier.' — Bill Gates

Russia has to have a technology company of global meaning sooner or later. We should take the depth of technical culture we have here and make it available worldwide. — Arkady Volozh

One can always sell something by offering the lowest price. But this does not create loyalty to your brand. Never did and never will. It only creates "loyalty" to that price point. As soon as your guest or visitor is offered a better price, he or she will jump ship, leaving you like a scorned lover in the middle of the night. — David Brier

I worked for three years in a small IT firm in Chicago. I managed our client base, so I translated into human speak for our technicians. But our company was sold, and the atmosphere and the culture really changed, so I quit without having anything else lined up. — Allison Tolman

A company's culture is the foundation for future innovation. An entrepreneurs job is to build the foundation — Brian Chesky

My formative years, until I was 12, was all shaped by Jamaican culture, by that economy, by the people in my family, who are agriculturalists, who were plantation workers, who harvested those crops and took them down to the boats run by the United Food Company, to load those ships at night, hence all the songs that I sing that come from that environment. — Harry Belafonte

Creative people in particular traditionally have strained relations with systems, structures, standards, and other perceived constraints on their creative freedom. Nowhere is this clearer than in big organizations where people often complain that "the systems" kill creativity, longingly thinking back to the halcyon days when the company was young and less bureaucratic. Going back to the unstructured start-up days is not an option, however. Established companies require a different kind of innovation: they need a culture in which creativity is part of the corporate ecosystem. The key to building a creative culture is not to declare war on systems, processes, and policies, but to embrace and redesign them so they support and actively enhance innovative behavior. Managers, in other words, have to fight systems with systems, creating an architecture of innovation in their teams and departments. The primary aim is to help people behave more like innovators. — Paddy Miller

I really believe that the single hardest thing in business is building a company that does repeatable innovation ... and just has this ongoing culture of excellence as it grows. — Sam Altman

In a culture that is becoming ever more story-stupid, in which a representative of the Coca-Cola company can, with a straight face, pronounce, as he donates a collection of archival Coca-Cola commercials to the Library of Congress, that 'Coca-Cola has become an integral part of people's lives by helping to tell these stories,' it is perhaps not surprising that people have trouble teaching and receiving a novel as complex and flawed as Huck Finn, but it is even more urgent that we learn to look passionately and technically at stories, if only to protect ourselves from the false and manipulative ones being circulated among us. — George Saunders

There would have been no Beats deal without the Samsung deal. It showed the number one company the importance of connecting with culture, — Kanye West

The key difference between captain and coach? The latter's opportunities for influence come at moments when play isn't happening, — Carolyn Taylor

Yes, yoga may make your company a better place to work for people who like yoga. It may also be a great team-building exercise for people who like yoga. Nonetheless, it's not culture. — Ben Horowitz

Create the kind of workplace and company culture that will attract great talent. If you hire brilliant people, they will make work feel more like play. — Richard Branson

A company that is not designed to create high-tech products is very unlikely to have the culture or the DNA that it takes to create high-tech products. So if you are a high-tech person in that company, then you're basically a glorified typist in some sense. It's very unlikely that the kind of people who would be successful in an entertainment company would even understand what programmers do that makes them more than typists. — Jessica Livingston

Ed Catmull has thought a lot about the role luck plays at a great company, and how businesspeople manage that luck. It's all in the preparedness, he says, and in creating a culture that can adapt to the unexpected. "These things are always going to happen. What separates you is your response, — Brent Schlender

As George Orwell said, it is not easy to become sane. For South Africa, perhaps it will take as many lifetimes as we have tried to put between the present and the Dutch East India Company. There are many minds if you take a good look. Eventually in the same way the measure of loss and grief does, karma will catch up with all of us. Post-apartheid South Africa is not more enlightened than her sister apartheid South Africa. You may know nothing but tell me what you feel when you think, see, act, respond and sense. What corresponds with thought, sight, action, response and your intuition? (The warrior plunders on) racism is especially a majority shareholder at all levels. We forget that it is a privilege to live in a post-apartheid South Africa. — Abigail George

For a company culture to change, the top executives must be on board with changing it. This means they must understand what the change means for them. — Janet Gregory

If you don't have public hangings for bad culture in a company, if you don't take people out and let them say, they went home to spend more time with the family. It's crazy. — Jack Welch

Working from home during normal working hours, which to many represents the height of enlightened culture, is a problem that - as Jonathan frequently says - can spread throughout a company and suck the life out of its workplace. — Eric Schmidt

some commonsense qualities that lead to a great company culture: a desire to buck trends, a good sense of perspective, a belief in a better tomorrow, a willingness to go the extra mile and stick with things for a long time, the ability to maintain quality relationships, and, last but not least, having fun and appreciating everything. — Susie Wyshak

You get to decide your company culture. — Osayi Emokpae Lasisi

As I see it, a person's culture represents his appraisal of the things that make up his life. And a fellow becomes cultured, I believe, by selecting that which is fine and beautiful in life and throwing aside that which is mediocre or phony. Sort of a series of free, very personal choices, you might say. If this is true, then I think it follows that 'freedom' is the most precious word to culture. Freedom to believe what you choose and read, think and say and be with what you choose. In America, we are guaranteed these freedoms. It is the constitutional privilege of every American to become cultured or to grow up like Donald Duck. I believe that this spiritual and intellectual freedom, which we Americans enjoy, is our greatest cultural blessing. Therefore, it seems to me, that the first duty of culture is to defend freedom and resist all tyranny. — Walt Disney Company

Superior execution is vital to sustaining the success initiated by an innovative service concept. An innovator's service quality is usually more difficult to imitate than its service concept. This is because quality service comes from inspired leadership throughout an organization, a customer-minded corporate culture, excellent service-system design, the effective use of information and technology, and other factors that develop slowly in a company, if at all. — Leonard L. Berry

It is the leader's job to lead by example and enforce the values and the behaviors to set the culture for any company or work group. Show me a company in rapid decline, and I will show you someone in charge who doesn't give a _. — Beth Ramsay

Once we got back to the office, our graphic artist made a poster of our core values. We believed we had the power to make one another's professional dreams come true. We believed the work we did affected more than just our clients, but each other. We believed in grace over guilt and we believed anybody could become great if they were challenged within the context of a community. Suddenly we were more than a company, we were a new and better culture. Our business had become a fund-raising front for a makeshift family. — Donald Miller

I still have every record company sending every new, hot track to me, to do music videos, so I'm chained by the foot to pop culture. I still know what kids dress like and speak like, and I still hang out with them. It's just the nature of my day job. I am a freak of nature that has to understand them. — Joseph M. Kahn

A great sports car that goes from 0-60 in 3.9 seconds is just a fact. To the wrong audience, it's irrelevant. But to the right audience, it's a passion. — David Brier

Brands are either built on reruns or coming attractions. The future has no road map while the past does. Creating a brand that blazes new trails can sometimes be bumpy but will also allow you to be the first to discover something new, something meaningful and something that makes others ask, "Why didn't we think of that?" Be very scared of "old tricks" and build a spirit of innovation. It's the "old tricks" that have the highest risk, not doing something bold. — David Brier

Just by being private, the culture will change. We won't be forced to make decisions that are 90 days in relevance. — Sam Zell