A Very Short Reading list for Managers and Leaders

With some quotes from Ben Horowitz’s latest book

PJ Teh
PJ Teh
Nov 3 · 5 min read

I recently finished reading Ben Horowitz’s “What You Do is Who You Are”, and think this is one of the most important books for managers and leaders (aspiring and future) to read.

The other books are

  • Grove’s “High Output Management” — the how-to-book that covers everything practical that a manager needs to do, such as training, 1–1, handling performance appraisals, etc.
  • Horowitz’s other book “Hard Thing about Hard Things” — this covers a lot of the hard things that come with management
  • Mintzberg’s “Simply Managing” — perhaps the most accurate description of management work across multiple people and organizations, and its consequences.
  • Turning People into Teams” by the Sherwinsthe best how-to book on establishing the rituals to shape group behaviours

But I would say that the Horowitz book trumps the others, because a culture is what makes an organization tick even when the leaders are not there. As leaders are the stewards and gardeners of the organization culture, this makes this book even more important than the others above. Think of Jobs’ impact on Apple. Closer to home, my organization, the Singapore Economic Development Board, was heavily influenced by ex-Chairman Mr. Philip Yeo (example, the norm of not having any check-in luggage on business trips).

Horowitz’s latest book really has a few gems:


In the end, the people who work for you won’t remember the press releases or the awards. They’ll lose track of the quarterly ups and downs. They may even grow hazy about the products. But they will never forget how it felt to work there, or the kind of people they became as a result. The company’s character and ethos will be the one thing they carry with them. It will be the glue that holds them together when things go wrong. It will be their guide to the tiny, daily decisions they make that add up to a sense of genuine purpose.


Who you are is not the values you list on the wall. It’s not what you say at an all-hands. It’s not your marketing campaign. It’s not even what you believe. It’s what you do. What you do is who you are.


Now, what past behavior could possibly have given Podesta the idea that he could send and receive tons of highly confidential campaign emails from his personal email account? Oh, snap. Not once did Hillary Clinton tell John Podesta, “Don’t take email security seriously.” Not once would she ever have told him that. But Clinton’s actions overrode her intentions. It did not matter that the campaign had taken all the steps necessary to prevent the attack, because John Podesta imitated what Hillary Clinton did, not what she said. The talk said, “Secure your email”; the walk said, “Personal convenience is more important.” The walk almost always wins. That’s how culture works.


Look again at the new code’s ethical injunction: We do the right thing. Period. Khosrowshahi is a strong CEO and likely has a comprehensive plan to program his values into the culture. But when we compare his precept to Louverture’s, there’s a clear gap in precision. What, exactly, does “Do the right thing” mean? And how does “Period” clarify that? Does “Do the right thing” mean make the quarter or tell the truth? Does it mean use your judgment or obey the law? Does it mean you can excuse losses by claiming some moral imperative? Will employees who are hired from a culture like Facebook have a different view of “Do the right thing” than employees hired from Oracle? Louverture spelled out what “Do the right thing” meant: don’t pillage, don’t cheat on your wife, take responsibility for yourself, personal industry, social morality, public education, religious toleration, free trade, civic pride, racial equality, and on and on. His instructions were specific, emphatic, and unceasing.


It’s also critical that leaders emphasize the “why” behind their values every chance they get, because the “why” is what gets remembered. The “what” is just another item in a giant stack of things you are supposed to do. So for Uber to merely say “We do what’s right, period”, means the company missed a big opportunity.


Meditating on your company’s downfall will enable you to build your culture the right way. Imagine you’ve gone bankrupt. Were you a great place to work? What was it like to do business with you? Did your encounters with people leave them better off or worse off? Did the quality of your products make you proud?


The samurai endured because of two additional techniques. First, they detailed every permutation of potential cultural or ethical dilemmas to prevent the code from being misinterpreted or deliberately misused. Second, they stamped their code deep with vivid stories.

A hallmark of the (Bushido) code was its detailed consideration of potential circumstances. Recall Uber’s terse “We do the right thing. Period.” Now consider the Bushido Shoshinshu: There are three ways of doing right. Suppose you are going somewhere with an acquaintance who has a hundred ounces of gold and wants to leave it at your house until returning, instead of taking the trouble to carry it with him. Suppose you take the gold and put it away where no one can find it. Now suppose your companion dies during the trip, perhaps from food poisoning or stroke. No one else knows he left gold at your house, and no else knows you have it. Under these circumstances, if you have no thought but of sorrow for the tragedy, and you report the gold to the relatives of the deceased, sending it to them as soon as possible, then you can truly be said to have done right. Now suppose the man with the gold was just an acquaintance, not such a close friend. No one knows about the gold he left with you, so there will be no inquiries. You happen to be in tight circumstances at the moment, so this is a bit of luck; why not just keep quiet about it? If you are ashamed to find such thoughts occurring to you, and so you change your mind and return the gold to the rightful heirs, you could be said to have done right out of a sense of shame. Now suppose someone in your household — maybe your wife, your children, or your servants — knows about the gold. Suppose you return the gold to the legitimate heirs out of shame for any designs anyone in your household might conceive, and out of fear for the legal consequences. Then you should be said to do right out of shame in relation to others. But what would you do if no one knew about it at all? The story makes no ultimate distinction between doing right for “the right reasons” or out of shame or guilt. Why you do right is not important. Doing right is all that counts. But the people who created the code understood that doing right is harder in some circumstances than others, so they provided case studies.

If you don’t clarify exactly what “the right thing” is for a tough call like that, it won’t be totally clear what your employees should do when they come to one — and tough calls are what define a company and a culture.

PJ Teh

Written by

PJ Teh

Singaporean & Meditator @ Intersection of Chemical Physics, Industry Development, Strategic Planning, Interaction & Service Design.

Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade