It's a fine sentiment but blunders over the meaning in a rush to confirm the wisdom of the original epigram. I don't know if this because the author of this me

It's a fine sentiment but blunders over the meaning in a rush to confirm the wisdom of the original epigram. I don't know if this because the author of this memo doesn't understand culture analytically or felt that explaining what was meant didn't have a place in this memo, but dismissing process was a mistake. A more nuanced perspective breaks culture into multiple domains: # Values # Norms # Routines Notice I didn't say processes. That's because processes are a subset of routines. They are the routines written down. The author seems to be terribly proud that AirBnB's routines aren't written down. I was left cold by this. It doesn't matter that much. Values are the fundamental beliefs that people cherish. The thing about values is that they are, as a result, near impossible to change quickly. Five to seven years and you'll have to change the CEO and the hiring policy to achieve it. Norms are the units of behavioral control. Norms are group-level social pressures such as bringing a plate for morning tea or writing good commit messages. These are the real interesting pieces because they shift readily in response to incentives. (If you're ever looking for easy goals in an organisational change effort, fiddle with the norms) Norms generally help keep routines-that-aren't-written-down (some might say "the unwritten processes") steady and reify new ones in response to externalities. So when Thiel was saying "don't fuck up the culture" I take away two things: * Don't bother wittering about values. You're stuck with them anyway. * Don't fuck with the incentive structure But contrary to a major point in the article, you can write down the routines as processes if you like, just remember to capture the why as well as the what.