Company Culture Famous Quotes & Sayings
100 Company Culture Famous Sayings, Quotes and Quotation.
Individual can fully exercise his or her abilities and skills. "We shall distribute the company's surplus earnings to all employees in an appropriate manner, and we shall assist them in a practical manner to secure a stable life. In return, all employees shall exert their utmost effort into their job." Finally, his new company would help his country. Its formally stated national intent was to help "reconstruct Japan, and to elevate the nation's culture through dynamic cultural and technological activities." Yet— Simon Winchester

Lederhosen Maker Opens First U.S. Store in Cincinnati By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Wiesnkoenig (pronounced VEE-sehn-koh-neg), the official supplier of lederhosen for the Munich Oktoberfest, opened its first store in the United States on Wednesday, in a brewery in Cincinnati's Over-the-Rhine neighborhood. Oliver Pfund, a Wiesnkoenig consultant, said, "We want to show people here in the U.S. you can wear the lederhosen with Chuck Taylors, you don't have to wear the suspenders." Founded in 2007, Wiesnkoenig has five stores in Germany and sells in department stores there and in Switzerland and Austria. Mr. Pfund said a brewery was a perfect location. He said the company hoped visitors to the brewery would "have an interest in the German culture, as well.— Anonymous

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

These are the voices which we hear in solitude, but they grow faint and inaudible as we enter into the world. Society everywhere is in conspiracy against the manhood of everyone of its members. Society is a joint-stock company, in which the members agree, for the better securing of his bread to each shareholder, to surrender the liberty and culture of the eater. The virtue in most request is conformity. Self-reliance is its aversion. It loves not realities and creators, but names and customs.— Ralph Waldo Emerson

As anyone who has covered the company for any length of time knows, Yahoo's record on major decision-making has been akin to a hippie commune - a lot of wrangling internally in a culture where everyone seems to have a voice and a reticence to push the button to launch.— Kara Swisher

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

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

As I saw it, our mandate was to foster a culture that would seek to keep our sightlines clear, even as we accepted that we were often trying to engage with and fix what we could not see. My hope was to make this culture so vigorous that it would survive when Pixar's founding members were long gone, enabling the company to continue producing original films that made money, yes, but also contributed positively to the world. That sounds like a lofty goal, but it was there for all of us from the beginning. We were blessed with a remarkable group of employees who valued change, risk, and the unknown and who wanted to rethink how we create. How could we enable the talents of these people, keep them happy, and not let the inevitable complexities that come with any collaborative endeavor undo us along the way? That was the job I assigned myself - and the one that still animates me to this day.— Ed Catmull

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

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

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

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 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

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

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 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

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

We kind of missed the boat on that," he recalled. " So we needed to catch up real fast." The mark of an innovative company is not only that it comes up with new ideas first, but also that it knows how to leapfrog when it find itself behind.— Walter Isaacson

So it comes down to scarcity, one product or service having qualities you won't find everywhere or ideally, anywhere. It's the job of every brand to seek that out as their standard, their stamp.— David Brier

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

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

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

Who are we, and how do we relate this idea in a way that's meaningful to our customers and the values they hold dear?— David Brier
In other words, one must define something meaningful. To do that, one must identify to whom this must be meaningful.

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

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

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

Those who produce works of genius are not those who spend their days in the most refined company ... or whose culture is the broadest; they are those who have the ability to stop living for themselves and make a mirror of their personality, so that their lives, however nondescript they may be, are reflected in it.— Marcel Proust

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

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

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

It may well be that what we have hitherto— Rener Banham
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.

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

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

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

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

We believe strongly that in the long term, we will be better served - as shareholders and in all other ways - by a company that does good things for the world even if we forgo some short term gains. This is an important aspect of our culture and is broadly shared within the company.— Larry Page

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

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

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

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

I read the Steve Jobs book, and that kind of changed everything. I've been, like, an Apple geek my whole life and have always seen him as a hero. But reading the book, and learning about how he built the company, and maintaining that corporate culture and all that, I think that influenced me a lot.— G-Eazy

With every plus there must be a minus; with every tear there must be a smile; and for every skunk there must be a fragrant flower. We live our lives in fear of dying and we overlook the simple truth that living is all we can control. Never too high, never too low will get you stuck in the middle of the road. A sense of equilibrium is needed to see life as it is, not what you would like it to be.— Phil Wohl

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 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?"— Mario Vargas-Llosa
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.

Consumers today have become a cynical mob of buyers who believe the reviews and ratings of complete strangers much more readily than your brand's promises and distinctions.— David Brier

It is the leader's job to model and enforce the values and behaviors that make up the company culture. "Model" the behaviors is key. "Do as I say" only breeds contempt from others.— Beth Ramsay

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

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

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

Many people, when considering a job, are primarily concerned with their role and responsibilities, the company's track record, the industry, and compensation. Further down on that list, probably somewhere between "length of commute" and "quality of coffee in the kitchen," comes culture. Smart creatives, though, place culture at the top of the list. To— Eric Schmidt

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

Fire fast: Fire people who do not fit into the culture of your company and who are negative.— Jason Calacanis

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

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

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

We've all seen it. A #startup begins with a #dream, a #passion to do something others have missed or overlooked.— David Brier

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

The key venue for freewheeling discourse was the Monday morning executive team gathering, which started at 9 and went for three or four hours. The focus was always on the future: What should each product do next? What new things should be developed? Jobs used the meeting to enforce a sense of shared mission at Apple. This served to centralize control, which made the company seem as tightly integrated as a good Apple product, and prevented the struggles between divisions that plagued decentralized companies.— Walter Isaacson

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

Successful companies will almost always be described in terms of a clear strategy, good organization, strong corporate culture, and customer focus. But whether these things drive company performance, or whether they're mainly attributions based on performance, is a different matter.— Phil Rosenzweig

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

Alcoa, the biggest aluminum company in the country, encountered two problems peculiar to Iceland when, in 2004, it set about erecting its giant smelting plant. The first was the so-called hidden people - or, to put it more plainly, elves - in whom some large number of Icelanders, steeped long and thoroughly in their rich folkloric culture, sincerely believe. Before Alcoa could build its smelter it had to defer to a government expert to scour the enclosed plant site and certify that no elves were on or under it. It was a delicate corporate situation, an Alcoa spokesman told me, because they had to pay hard cash to declare the site elf-free, but, as he put it, we couldn't as a company be in a position of acknowledging the existence of hidden people.— Michael Lewis

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

Twenty percent of our success is the new technology that we embrace ... [but] eighty percent of our success is in the culture of our company."24 Indeed,— James C. Collins
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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

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

No company has a permanent consumer franchise. No one has the only game in town. The never-ending cycle of destruction and change inherent in a capitalist economy always provides new opportunities for those with determination, goals and concentration.— Harvey MacKay

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

I realised with a prickle of discomfort why he bothered me: it was not so much that I resented the hearty backslapping bonhomie of English upper-class gentlemen, for I could tolerate it well enough in Sidney on his own. It was the way Sidney fell so easily into this strutting group of young men, where I could not, and the fear that he might in some ways prefer their company to mine. Once again, I felt that peculiar stab of loneliness that only an exile truly knows: the sense that I did not belong, and never would again.— S.J. Parris

But in the military you don't get trusted positions just because of your ability. You also have to attract the notice of superior officers. You have to be liked. You have to fit in with the system. You have to look like what the officers above you think that officers should look like. You have to think in ways that they are comfortable with.— Orson Scott Card
The result was that you ended up with a command structure that was top-heavy with guys who looked good in uniform and talked right and did well enough not to embarrass themselves, while the really good ones quietly did all the serious work and bailed out their superiors and got blamed for errors they had advised against until they eventually got out.
That was the military.

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

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

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

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

Fire relatively quickly. A poorly performing employee is likely also an unhappy employee and that can be a cancer to your company's culture. If an employee is no longer achieving what you want or is not fitting in for whatever reason, think about the specific accomplishments or behavior you're looking for. Sit down with him and give him very specific, quantifiable goals you want him to accomplish over the next two months. If he can't meet your requirements in that two-month period, let him go. You will never regret it. Save— Chris LoPresti

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

If the practices and processes inside a company don't drive the execution of values, then people don't get it. The question is, do you create a culture of behavior and action that really demonstrates those values and a reward system for those who adhere to them?— Lou Gerstner

Ultimately, strong branding is not just a promise to our customers,to our partners, to our shareholders and to our communities;it is also a promise to ourselves ... in that sense, it is about using a brand as a beacon, as a compass, for determining the right actions, for staying the course, for evolving a culture, for inspiring a company to reach its full potential.— Carly Fiorina

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

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

I was not above filching empty candy bar wrappers from— Mary Potter Kenyon
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.

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

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

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

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

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

To stay vigorous, a company needs to provide a stimulating and challenging environment for all these types: the dreamer, the entrepreneur, the professional manager, and the leader. If it doesn't, it risks becoming yet another mediocre corporation.— Howard Schultz

Somebody asked me 'what's the job of a CEO', and there's a number of things a CEO does. What you mostly do is articulate the vision, develop the strategy, and you gotta hire people to fit the culture. If you do those three things, you basically have a company. And that company will hopefully be successful, if you have the right vision, the right strategy, and good people.— Brian Chesky

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

Notes Day wasn't an end point but a beginning - a way of making room for our employees to step forward and think about their role in our company's future. I said before that problems are easy to identify, but finding the source of those problems is extraordinarily difficult. Notes brought problems to the surface - but we still had the hard work in front of us. Notes Day didn't solve anything all by itself. But it shifted our culture - repaired it, even - in ways that will make us better as we go forward.— Ed Catmull

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

Since making movies is such a messy process, we need to be able to talk candidly, among ourselves, about the mess without having it shared outside the company. By sharing problems and sensitive issues with employees, we make them partners and partowners in our culture, and they do not want to let each other down.— Ed Catmull

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

Startups need to focus on building a foundation for their company culture early, and then they need to revisit it often. Every time a hire is made, a feature is launched, a Facebook status is updated, a press interview is given, a round of financing is raised, or a meeting is held, culture should be part of the decision-making process.— Leah Busque

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

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

There will be others, many others. You'll try desperately to digest a single word through the acronym-laden gibberish, while beginning to wonder what the point of all this is, and also why you didn't feel that staple you just sent into your thigh. You usually do. You'll wonder what your company even does. After six years, you have no idea what an information system is, do you? Maybe you should ask. Maybe that's how this ends. You'll imagine how poetic it would be to simply unmute yourself and say, "Sorry to interrupt, guys, but what's an information system?"— Colin Nissan
Still, your mind will drift further, envisioning how much more tolerable this call would be if you could just slowly masturbate during it. So you do. You masturbate during it. And it's beautiful. Masturbating, invisible within your three-walled fortress. Invisible ... invisible ... practically invisible.

Customer service shouldn't just be A department, it should be the entire company.— Tony Hsieh
