I love this illustration because is the simplest distillation of why things don't work out as planned in companies. Every company or product failure I've seen has gone against this truth; and conversely, every success had the food chain in harmony.

The most important thing I learned in my work is that culture cannot be built, but rather it's a by-product of when actions lead to success. It doesn't matter what slogans hang on the walls or what's on the All Hands slide decks, if the actions don't match, the culture won't fit.

The most obvious recent example of this is Facebook. It doesn't matter what Zuckerberg says in Congress or how many people are hired to Civic Integrity teams... the consistent, ongoing action of prioritizing growth above all else made Facebook very successful and created a culture that was incapable of doing otherwise. Actions eat culture.