Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    What You Do Is Who You Are: How to Create Your Business Culture
    Unavailable
    What You Do Is Who You Are: How to Create Your Business Culture
    Unavailable
    What You Do Is Who You Are: How to Create Your Business Culture
    Audiobook6 hours

    What You Do Is Who You Are: How to Create Your Business Culture

    Written by Ben Horowitz

    Narrated by Kevin Kenerly

    4.5/5

    ()

    Unavailable in your country

    Unavailable in your country

    Read the ebook instead

    About this audiobook

    Ben Horowitz, a leading venture capitalist, modern management expert, and New York Times bestselling author combines lessons both from history and modern organisational practice with practical and often surprising advice to help us build cultures that can weather both good and bad times.

    The times and circumstances in which people were raised often shape them – yet a few leaders have managed to shape their times. In this follow-up to the bestselling business classic The Hard Thing About Hard Things, Ben Horowitz turns his attention to a question crucial to every organisation: How do you create and sustain the culture you want?

    This book is a journey through cultures ancient to modern, spotlighting models of leadership and culture-building from the samurai to prison gangs. Along the way, it answers fundamental questions: Who are we? How do people talk about us when we’re not around? How do we treat our customers? Can we be trusted?

    Because who you are is not the values you list on the wall. It’s not what you say in a 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 will help you do the things needed to become the kind of leader you want to be – and others want to follow.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherHarperCollins Publishers
    Release dateOct 29, 2019
    ISBN9780008356149
    Author

    Ben Horowitz

    Ben Horowitz is the cofounder and general partner of Andreessen Horowitz, a Silicon Valley–based venture capital firm that invests in entrepreneurs building the next generation of leading technology companies. The firm's investments include Airbnb, GitHub, Facebook, Pinterest, and Twitter. Previously he was cofounder and CEO of Opsware, formerly Loudcloud, which was acquired by Hewlett-Packard for $1.6 billion in 2007. Horowitz writes about his experiences and insights from his career as a computer science student, software engineer, cofounder, CEO, and investor in a blog that is read by nearly ten million people. He has also been featured in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the New Yorker, Fortune, the Economist, and Bloomberg Businessweek, among others. Horowitz lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife, Felicia.

    More audiobooks from Ben Horowitz

    Related to What You Do Is Who You Are

    Related audiobooks

    Leadership For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Notes From Tomorrow

      Sep 16, 2021

      Five designers. Five different points of view. Virgil Abloh, Maximilian Davis, Martine Rose, Lev Tanju and Florence Tétier have all approached the crafting of their labels by eschewing industry expectation and building a new type of narrative on fash

      23 min read

    • Article

      United, Not Divided

      Nov 3, 2022

      One of the most depressing aspects of the Salman Rushdie stabbing is the way that it so quickly became folded into our ongoing obsession with the so-called culture wars. It is extraordinary and saddening that when writers as august as Philip Pullman,

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Power of 'Onlyness'

      May 1, 2018

      How do you define ‘onlyness’? The word actually doesn’t appear in the English dictionary, but I would argue that it should. Simply put, it means that anyone’s — and quite possibly everyone’s — ideas matter. The genesis of the word starts with the fac

      7 min read

    • Article

      Krista Tippett

      Dec 3, 2016

      Krista Tippett
      2 min read

    • Article

      In Discussion With Vanya

      Aug 22, 2022

      Q In essence, your book opens a door to the curious reader, providing a wide window through which to view and understand township life differently. South Africans can get a visceral sense of township cultural identity and understand why people there

      2 min read

    • Article

      Making the CULT

      Nov 21, 2022

      Making the CULT
      12 min read

    • Article

      Is Any Conflict Unsolvable? This Author Doesn’t Think So.

      May 19, 2021

      In her book “High Conflict,” Amanda Ripley explores how forces that stoke conflict cast our adversaries as less than human. But there is a way out.

      6 min read

    • Article

      Lebo Lion On Business, Race, The Black Customer And More

      Feb 21, 2021

      FRom the moment I found out about Lebo Lion the founder of Beople SA, a marketing and public relations agency, I have since been hooked to her content. on a daily basis Lion gives nuggets of information and at times talks about marketing, personal br

      3 min read

    • Article

      Holding Space for a New Creative Process

      Jul 7, 2021

      If everything has to change – and deep down, we know that it does – it will take nothing less than a complete reimagining. A gentle, powerful, swirling dreaming of how things could be otherwise. The ability to embrace the void and the nothingness. Th

      6 min read

    • Article

      Bubble, bubble, TOIL & TROUBLE

      Oct 23, 2020

      We’ve all heard about the infamous boiled frog experiment. Chuck a frog into a pot of boiling water and he’ll leap back out again. But if you put him in a pot of cool water and heat the water very slowly, he won’t realise the peril he’s in until it’s

      4 min read

    • Article

      Lebo Lion On Business, Race, The Black Customer And More

      Feb 21, 2021

      FROM the moment I found out about Lebo Lion the founder of Beople SA, a marketing and public relations agency, I have since been hooked to her content. On a daily basis Lion gives nuggets of information and at times talks about marketing, personal br

      3 min read

    • Article

      Cool As A Cucumber

      Jun 3, 2021

      Cool As A Cucumber
      3 min read

    • Article

      Unexpected Rewards

      Apr 5, 2024

      Unexpected Rewards
      8 min read

    • Article

      Doughnut Economics

      May 16, 2018

      Doughnut Economics
      15 min read

    • Article

      Holding the Line

      Apr 1, 2022

      Holding the Line
      8 min read

    • Article

      10 Questions With…

      Jun 5, 2022

      10 Questions With…
      4 min read

    • Article

      Beyond Human

      Apr 8, 2019

      Beyond Human
      7 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for What You Do Is Who You Are

    4.5/5

    82 ratings2 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      20 percent of this book is pretty much copy pasted from the hard thing about hard things.
    • 3/5
      I think that Ben Horowitz has an important message to pass in this book - that culture matters and leaders of organizations need to intentionally shape it through their decisions and behavior. It's a pity that it is so hard to get it through the structure of this book.I liked Ben's take on culture - there is no silver bullet culture that can be replicated to guarantee the success, it's complimentary to strategy, it's evolving and leaders need to be aware of those small changes to respond to them. I enjoyed the most the last part of the book with tactical solutions, real-life examples, and suggestions coming straight from the author. Small bites, but very tasty. I wish the main course was as good as the dessert.Unfortunately, the main part of the book is hard to digest. First of all, it is repetitive - you'll read the same thing at least three times: in the context of a historical figure, a modern business leader, and in the summary. And I don't think that neither historical reference nor summary brings any additional value, just making the book longer and the message harder to pass.Secondly, stories of the past are presented very selectively to reinforce author's narrative about culture and remain silent about the facts that contradict it. Often you will also find confusing examples that make the whole "inspired by history" thing questionable. E.g. importance of integrity is called out many times throughout the book, but historical figures praised by the author break their own rules often while enforcing others to follow them.Lastly, Ben admits that culture is a very complex thing and it's hard to explain or see how it works... and then oversimplifies social and organizational mechanisms to create catchy sounding rules that are supposed to be verified by the success of a companies that use them. I feel like there is a number of factors contributing to their success and drawing a straight line from e.g. using doors as desks in Amazon to its multibillion revenues is too much of a stretch.Overall, there are many interesting thoughts, ideas, and examples in this book... that could be contained in a long blogpost or a few articles. Burring them deeply into the historical context of questionable leaders makes the book too long and its possible impact less powerful.