Patrick Lencioni Quotes

For acquiring companies, the excitement is almost always about where they are going - that is, their strategy for gaining greater growth and productivity. But when mergers fail, it's often because no one focused on who they are - that is, their culture, which is critical to successfully bringing different groups of people together.

I think the most important thing is just if you hire people whose personal values match the corporate core values - and not just the stated ones.

Company cultures are like country cultures. Never try to change one. Try, instead, to work with what you've got.

In my experience, it is the leader - the CEO - who plays the crucial role in creating and 'owning' an organization's culture, setting the tone, and executing on that consistently.

Pay attention to your culture and your hires from the very beginning.

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.

Whenever someone leaves, the next person that gets pulled in is somebody with similar values.

We hired extremely slowly at the beginning. It took us a year to get to four people. It's hard to hire as a very small company, and we wanted to make sure we found people who cared a lot about what Stripe was doing.

More and more, in any company, managers are dealing with different cultures. Companies are going global, but the teams are being divided and scattered all over the planet.

Since most startups operate at a break-neck pace, with a concept to prove or a product to launch within a rapidly shortening runway of financing, company culture often gets shoved aside. This is a big, big mistake: Nobody serious about their business should put culture in the corner.

If the culture you have is radically different from an 'experiment and take-risk' culture, then you have a big change you going to have to make - and no little gimmicks are going to do it for you.

If I had not been coached well about how to deal with a culture and a set of values that were foreign to my own, I would not have been able to be successful.

The first people in a company are the most important. They will hire people like themselves and create a culture that either works or eats away at the chance for success.

Previous experience, key skills, and education. They're undoubtedly all important things you consider when filtering through applicants in order to make a new hire. But, what's another major determining factor of whether or not that hopeful interviewee deserves an offer letter? Cultural fit.

The challenge is always around culture. I think that's often underestimated because people focus on the substance and the practical; soft steps go missing.

If you look at the history of our company, we don't do a lot of acquisition. The reason is, we need to see that people are culturally and philosophically aligned with the way that we approach the business.

Values can set a company apart from the competition by clarifying its identity and serving as a rallying point for employees. But coming up with strong values - and sticking to them - requires real guts.

When you surround yourself with white people, you continue to hire white people, and when you make an effort to hire people of color, that does bring in different stories and different people.

I feel like I'm cultured enough to fit into any environment.

We decided that if we get the culture right, most of the stuff, like building a brand around delivering the very best customer service, will just take care of itself.

I don't hire people who have to be told to be nice. I hire nice people.

AirBnB spent 5 months interviewing their first employee, before they hired someone and in their first year, they only hired 2 people.

Only hire people you want to have dinner with.

When I interview people, I look at their values. I always say that the best chance of success is if the individual's values are aligned with the corporate values.

If you compromise in the first five, ten hires it might kill the company.