Culture Is What You Do, Not What You Say

Most companies get culture completely backward. They craft beautiful mission statements, post inspiring values on office walls, and hold team meetings about integrity and collaboration. Then they wonder why their actual workplace feels nothing like those aspirational words.

Here's what they're missing: culture isn't a set of beliefs. It's a set of actions.

The Ancient Wisdom of Action

The ancient warrior code understood something modern businesses often forget. True culture emerges from behavior, not philosophy. It's not what you say you believe that matters. It's what you do when nobody's watching, how you treat each other when things get difficult, and what actions you actually reward or punish.

Everyone believes they're the hero of their own story. This means people will always convince themselves they're living up to company values, even when their behavior suggests otherwise. A person can genuinely believe they embody empathy while consistently interrupting colleagues and dismissing their ideas.

I once worked with a company that listed empathy as a core value. They defined it as truly understanding others' perspectives rather than simply shouting them down. Sounds reasonable, right?

In practice, it became a weapon. Whenever someone received critical feedback, they'd respond with "You're being off culture. You're not showing empathy." The value became a shield against accountability rather than a guide for better behavior.

That's the fundamental problem with values-based culture. When your cultural foundation rests on subjective interpretations of abstract concepts, everyone interprets those concepts in ways that justify their existing behavior.

The Power of Specific Actions

Real culture requires specific, measurable behaviors that leave no room for interpretation. Instead of saying "we respect entrepreneurs," you might say "you cannot be late to meetings with entrepreneurs, and if you are, you pay a fifty dollar fine."

Instead of proclaiming "we respond promptly to partners," you establish a rule: "entrepreneurs who we decide not to invest in receive written explanations within forty eight hours of our decision."

These aren't beliefs or values. They're concrete actions with clear consequences. There's no wiggle room, no subjective interpretation, no way to convince yourself you're following the culture while doing something else entirely.

When someone asks why they have to pay fifty dollars for being five minutes late because they needed to use the bathroom, the answer reveals the deeper cultural truth. Building a company is extraordinarily difficult. We show respect for that difficulty by being punctual. Every time you show up on time, you reinforce the message that we take this work seriously.

The specific action teaches the underlying principle more effectively than any motivational poster ever could.

Programming Behavior Through Shock

Sometimes the most effective cultural actions seem almost nonsensical at first glance. A major social media company once adopted the motto "move fast and break things." On the surface, this sounds like terrible advice. Who wants broken systems?

But the seemingly contradictory message served a crucial purpose. The company was racing against established competitors who had significant head starts. Speed mattered more than perfection. Making mistakes was acceptable; moving slowly was not.

Everyone who heard this motto understood exactly what behavior was expected. Don't spend weeks perfecting a feature when you could launch it today and improve it tomorrow. Don't hold lengthy meetings debating potential problems when you could implement a solution and see what actually happens.

The message was crystal clear, and it worked. The company grew faster than their competitors and captured market leadership. Later, as they became larger and more influential, they evolved their cultural focus because the behaviors needed for rapid growth differ from those required for responsible stewardship of a massive platform.

This illustrates another crucial point about action-based culture: it should evolve as your organization's needs change. What works for a startup racing to find product-market fit may be disastrous for a mature company managing billions of users' data.

The Cascade Effect of Cultural Debt

When you fail to enforce cultural actions, the consequences spread like ripples in a pond. Suppose you establish a rule about meeting punctuality but then ignore it when people consistently arrive late. You've just taught everyone that your cultural statements are suggestions rather than requirements.

The impact goes far beyond scheduling. Team members start questioning which other rules are actually optional. Respect for organizational standards erodes. People begin testing boundaries in other areas.

Soon you have employees who show up late, miss deadlines, treat customers poorly, and justify it all by pointing to the inconsistent enforcement they observe around them. The culture you intended to build gets replaced by a culture of selective compliance and justified mediocrity.

Beyond the Poster on the Wall

Values like integrity, teamwork, and excellence sound inspiring, but they mean nothing without corresponding actions. What specific behaviors demonstrate integrity in your organization? How exactly do you want people to collaborate? What does excellence look like in practice?

If you can't answer these questions with concrete, observable behaviors, you don't have a culture. You have a marketing campaign.

The strongest organizational cultures I've encountered all share this characteristic: they translate abstract principles into specific actions that everyone understands and leadership consistently enforces.

They don't rely on people's good intentions or hope that shared values will naturally produce desired behaviors. They program those behaviors directly through clear expectations and consistent consequences.

Running Toward Cultural Accountability

Creating action-based culture requires the same courage needed for any other leadership challenge. You have to be willing to enforce standards even when it's uncomfortable, expensive, or unpopular.

This means having difficult conversations with people who violate cultural behaviors, even when they're high performers or people you personally like. It means consistently applying consequences rather than making exceptions for special circumstances.

Most importantly, it means modeling the behaviors you expect from others. If punctuality matters, you show up on time. If prompt communication is important, you respond quickly. If quality standards are non-negotiable, your work exemplifies those standards.

Culture is ultimately about who you are when it's difficult to be that person. It's what you do when doing the right thing costs you something valuable. It's the behaviors you maintain when maintaining them requires genuine sacrifice.

You can't inspire your way to strong culture. You can't motivate your way there either. You can only build it through specific actions that you require, enforce, and model consistently over time.

Because at the end of the day, your culture isn't what you say it is. It's what you repeatedly do, especially when doing something else would be easier.