You don't create a culture

What the hell!? 37 signals are SO full of themselves. They are a small business, yet they keep posting articles like they have discovered the secret to changing the world. The restaurant round the corner to my house make more income than them, but I do not see the owner standing outside telling others how to run a restaurant instead of inside cooking.<p>37 Signals is one of the more annoying Web 2.0 companies. Yes, I know you're trying to drum up interest so people invite you to hold talks, but why do all articles always seem to be about how wonderful you are, how great your company is, and you reinvented something or the other.<p>Get over it, you guys are not in possesion of the fountain of wisdom.

I think a better question would be<p>"How do I improve the culture?" or "How do I maintain this culture, now that we have it?"

You don't create it, but I think it can be artfully guided. By being cognizant of the incentives and disincentives you create every day, you can exert a good deal of control over it.

So obvious, and yet so difficult for bigger companies to get right.

An artificial culture is obviously phony and worse than no culture at all.<p>I once worked at a company that "claimed" a culture with emphasis in employee training (which was obviously false).<p>The employees referred to the corporate culture as:<p><i>B</i>ig <i>U</i>ltimate <i>L</i>arge <i>L</i>ame <i>S</i>pecial <i>H</i>igh <i>I</i>ntensity <i>T</i>raining