Company culture is the emergent system of values, behaviors, norms, decision-making patterns, and unspoken assumptions that govern how people work together in an organization. It is shaped primarily by the founders' actual behavior (not stated values), by hiring decisions (who gets in and who doesn't), by what gets rewarded (promotions, compensation, recognition), by what gets tolerated (bad behavior allowed to continue), and by the cumulative effect of thousands of small decisions over time. Culture is one of the most-discussed and least-understood elements of company building because culture is what people actually do, not what they say they value. It is the operating system of the company, more durable than any individual...