Ben Howoritz’s new book What You Do is Who You Are was released a couple weeks ago and this post comes to you from the halfway point of its pages. It’s a great read about building culture and immediately applicable for anyone who is building anything.

Favorite takeaway thus far: virtues > values. Values are what you believe, virtues are what you do. And naturally, what you do is who you (really) are.

Too often, it seems, company values are plastered upon the walls of companies and contrast sharply against the reality of the behaviors between those walls. How often is your biggest pet peeve of colleagues and managers alike that what they say is not even close to what they do (and who they are)? It’s the worst, right?

Or does the team you look after inexplicably zig when you ask them to zag? We probably don’t do enough to program our cultures. At all levels. Too much is left to chance.

Popular values like accountability, boldness, or transparency can easily be misconstrued or overly vague if not contextualized in practical reality. How is this problem solved in Horowitz’s quest to align culture to virtues? Create shocking rules.

At Andreessen Horowitz they instituted a policy where, each minute a team member runs late for a meeting with an entrepreneur, they pay a $10 fine. Without careful attention you could run up a tab quickly! On it’s own this is not culture. But the rule causes employees to stop and ask why the rule is there at all. This allows their leaders to repeat the mission – respect for the entrepreneurs they serve above all – by being on time and of service as their top priority. They created a rule that would help align the firms behavior with that core virtue. There are more examples in the book to round out the point but I won’t ruin them here.

Is there an opportunity to create a shocking rule for your team or at your company to institutionalize the culture you want to see each day?