Culture Guides Decisions and Attracts Right People
by Chip Conley on August 3, 2025
Chip Conley believes that culture becomes increasingly vital as organizations become more distributed, serving as both a decision-making framework and a talent magnet.
Culture is fundamentally "what happens around here when the boss is not around." In distributed organizations—whether multiple physical locations like Joie de Vivre's 52 hotels or remote work environments like today's tech companies—culture becomes the invisible force guiding decisions when direct supervision isn't possible. The more distributed your team, the more critical culture becomes, yet paradoxically, the harder it is to maintain.
Culture serves two essential functions. First, it provides a decision-making framework that helps employees navigate ambiguity without constant direction. Second, it acts as a talent magnet, attracting people who resonate with your values while filtering out those who don't. As Conley observed at Airbnb, people from Apple tended to integrate well while those from Amazon often struggled—evidence that different organizational cultures create distinct operating environments.
For leaders, this means culture-building should be deliberate rather than accidental. When interviewing candidates, Conley recommends asking them to describe your culture in 3-5 adjectives, then asking multiple team members the same question. Alignment in these answers indicates cultural clarity; misalignment suggests fragmentation that needs addressing.
For individual contributors, understanding a potential employer's culture before accepting a job is crucial. Conley suggests moving beyond the concept of "culture fit" (which can exclude diversity) to "culture add" (which values diverse perspectives while maintaining core values). When interviewing, ask about the biggest cultural challenges and whether they're being addressed—this reveals both self-awareness and improvement trajectory.
The practical implication is that culture becomes most visible during transitions and challenges. As Conley notes, "The more distributed you are, of course in the remote work world we live in, the more culture is important and more difficult." This requires deliberate investment in bringing teams together physically when possible, as digital interactions alone provide limited cultural cues.