# How Can a Culture Outlast Its Founder?

Five factors that determine whether an organization's culture survives after its founder is gone.

I look at five factors to determine whether an organization's culture is likely to outlast its founder:

### 1) Who's in charge of it, HR or Managers?

HR-driven initiatives are inherently less effective than those driven through the hierarchical line, for several reasons. First, employees tend to interpret requests that do not come from their boss as optional. Moreover, HR is distant from the day-to-day reality of the people it seeks to influence, and does not know the local context well enough, which means it may propose irrelevant initiatives or present otherwise relevant ones in ways that feel irrelevant to employees. It also lacks the daily contact needed to provide the feedback and reinforcement that help habits stick. Finally, HR usually evaluates effectiveness through reports or surveys, which are easier to game than direct observation through the hierarchical line.

For a culture to stick, it must be driven through the hierarchical line, from each manager to his or her direct reports, without skipping any level. That is the degree of closeness required for a culture to take hold meaningfully, not superficially, and persist beyond an initial period of intense focus.

### 2) Is it values-based or virtues-based?

Values-based cultures describe abstract ideals that sound good but leave a lot of discretion as to what they mean concretely. As a result, they can be plausibly denied or implemented only saltuarily; and as exceptions pile up, the values are gradually forgotten. Virtues-based cultures, conversely, describe behaviors. As such, it is much easier to determine objectively whether an employee embodies the culture, and therefore to know whom to praise and whom to call out.

### 3) Is it about the WHAT or about the WHAT and WHY?

In the short term, there is not much difference between driving a culture by telling people WHAT they should do and telling them both WHAT and WHY. In the long term, however, unless the WHY is clear, the WHAT gradually erodes into unintended behavior or becomes so superficial as to be meaningless. Great leaders explain the WHY not because it is necessary to understand the WHAT this time, but because it ensures that the underlying principles are preserved correctly as the form of the WHAT changes.

### 4) Is it a factor or a blocker in decisions?

Everyone knows that, if culture is to be taken seriously, it must be at least a factor in decisions. For example, a company with a culture of Safety must consider safety when purchasing equipment or writing procedures. However, when culture is merely one factor in a trade-off, then whenever it becomes tempting to act against it, an argument can be made that doing so is worth it. That is how you end up with cultures that are stewarded when it is easy, but not when it is hard, and eventually, exception after exception, they are abandoned. For a culture to remain stable over time, it must become non-negotiable. The organization must constantly reinforce that it is acceptable to sacrifice other metrics (production, profits, and so on) when pursuing them would compromise the culture.

### 5) Is it a factor or a blocker in promotions?

Suppose an employee exceeds expectations on business targets (sales, production, and so on) but compromises the culture. Should they nevertheless get a promotion?

Most companies would answer by weighing how much the employee exceeded expectations against how much they compromised the culture. But doing so signals that culture matters only up to a point. More importantly, it promotes people who will eventually become leaders unable to uphold it. The alternative is to make both business performance and culture necessary conditions for promotion: only managers who succeed at both are eligible to advance.

This need not alienate star employees if the rule is communicated clearly and early. Someone who discovers at year-end that culture has cost them a promotion may be furious, but someone who has been told for two years that both business results and culture are required has little reason to be surprised.