100 Thought-Provoking Company Culture Quotes

For any organization to thrive, it requires vision and strong company culture. Here are 100 thought-provoking company culture quotes to inspire you, help you form a collaborative team, and build a healthy company culture.

If you observe all the big companies like Apple or Amazon, the common thread you would encounter is its strong company culture. It says a lot about how having strong company values is integral to attracting the right people.

Do you know, company culture is extremely vital to 46% of job seekers while deciding to join a company. Most job seekers evaluate probable companies based on their company culture. It is therefore essential to build a foundation where employees experience a collaborative workplace and help build a strong work culture.

The following company culture quotes from great brains, business leaders, and entrepreneurs illustrate why investing in building a strong workplace culture culture is the single best thing a company can do.

So, let's dive into our ultimate collection of company culture quotes to help you rethink the way you perceive workplace culture.

1. Jack Welch

No company, small or large, can win over the long run without energized employees who believe in the mission and understand how to achieve it.

2. Gary Vaynerchuk

Company culture is the backbone of any successful organization.

3. Patrick Whitesell

You can have all the right strategies in the world; if you don't have the right culture, you're dead.

4. Richard Branson

There's no magic formula for great company culture. The key is just to treat your staff how you would like to be treated.

5. Peter F. Drucker

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

6. Bill Gates

If your culture doesn't like geeks, you are in real trouble.

7. Mark Parker

One of my fears is being this big, slow, constipated, bureaucratic company that's happy with its success.

8. Brian Chesky

A company's culture is the foundation for future innovation. An entrepreneur's job is to build the foundation.

9. Michael Kouly

The culture of a company is the sum of the behaviors of all its people.

10. Jack Ma

You need the right people with you, not the best people.

11. Sheryl Sandberg

Presenting leadership as a list of carefully defined qualities (like strategic, analytical, and performance-oriented) no longer holds. Instead, true leadership stems from individuality that is honestly and sometimes imperfectly expressed. Leaders should strive for authenticity over perfection.

12. Jim Goodnight

Treat employees like they make a difference, and they will.

13. Peter F. Drucker

The entrepreneur always searches for change, responds to it, and exploits it as an opportunity.

14. Justin Moore

This is not about fuzzy, holding hands around a campfire, kumbaya stuff. That’s not what values and culture and mission is about. This is about building an organization for success. This is about winning. This is about doing the tactical things to make sure your organization and your people are aligned around the same thing.

15. Simon Sinek

Corporate culture matters. How management chooses to treat its people impacts everything for better or for worse.

16. Patrick Campbell

Engendering a culture of trust also does wonders. This is because, even if you have a heated argument, as long as you keep in the back of your mind that the people you’re arguing with do have the best in mind for the company and wider team, you’ll always be able to make it to the end and remain friendly.

17. Shep Hyken

The best companies hire for attitude and personality. The attitude can be great, but the applicant's personality must fit the culture.

18. Mark Zuckerberg

I think as a company, if you can get those two things right - having a clear direction on what you are trying to do and bringing in great people who can execute on the stuff - then you can do pretty well.

19. Kip Tindell

You can build a much more wonderful company on love than you can on fear.

20. Biz Stone

Positive culture comes from being mindful and respecting your co-workers, and being empathetic.

21. Carrick and Dunaway

Of the six critical elements of work fit, culture fit is the hardest to grasp. It is largely invisible, unwritten and unspoken, but paradoxically, it causes employees the greatest pain, dissatisfaction, frustration and failure to thrive.

22. Stephen Shapiro

A culture of innovation can be a company's primary source of competitive advantage and can pay off steadily over the years.

23. Brittany Forsyth

Determine what behaviors and beliefs you value as a company, and have everyone live true to them. These behaviors and beliefs should be so essential to your core that you don’t even think of it as a culture.

24. Steve Jobs

Great things in business are never done by one person. They're done by a team of people.

25. Libby Sartain

If a Brand doesn't live on the inside, it can't thrive on the outside.

26. Stephen R. Covey

Strength lies in differences, not in similarities.

27. Andrew Wilkinson

Company culture is the continuous pursuit of building the best, most talented, and the happiest team we possibly can.

28. Lou Gerstner

Culture isn't just one aspect of the game; it is the game. In the end, an organization is nothing more than the collective capacity of its people to create value.

29. Richard Perrin

Organizational culture is the sum of values and rituals which serve as 'glue' to integrate the members of the organization.

30. Richard Branson

Create the kind of workplace and company culture that will attract great talent. If you hire brilliant people, they will make work feel more like play.

31. David Cummings

Corporate culture is the only sustainable competitive advantage that is completely within the control of the entrepreneur. Develop a strong corporate culture first and foremost.

32. Louis V. Gerstner, Jr.

Until I came to IBM, I probably would have told you that culture was just one among several important elements in any organization's makeup and success — along with vision, strategy, marketing, financials, and the like... I came to see, in my time at IBM, that culture isn't just one aspect of the game, it is the game. In the end, an organization is nothing more than the collective capacity of its people to create value.

33. Justin McLeod

I look for two things when I hire a new employee: ambition and humility. Without a proven track record of initiative and ambition, it’s likely the person becomes a drain rather than a contributor to the company — even the really smart, talented ones.

34. Stan Slap

A company can’t buy true emotional commitment from managers no matter how much it’s willing to spend; this is something too valuable to have a price tag. And yet a company can’t afford not to have it.

35. Marcus Buckingham

Talent is the multiplier. The more energy and attention you invest in it, the greater the yield.

36. Doris Kearns Goodwin

Good leadership requires you to surround yourself with people of diverse perspectives who can disagree with you without fear of retaliation.

37. Jim Collins

In determining the right people, the good-to-great companies placed greater weight on character attributes than on specific educational background, practical skills, specialized knowledge, or work experience.

38. Edgar Schein

If culture is like personality or character, then it matters in the sense to what extent is the culture adaptive to both the external and internal realities. If it’s not adaptive, it matters a lot. If it’s adaptive, it doesn’t matter much, people don’t notice it, they just go along their merry way. So culture really only matters when there is a problem. In the same sense that personality only matters when things aren’t working right for you. Otherwise it’s just there. It’s part of you.

39. Scott Berkun

The most vocal challengers to most cultures are the first to be shown the door. It’s in human nature to want to eliminate the most disruptive people. And it’s also human nature to want to bring in more people that fit in well. Repeat these two behaviors over time and culture becomes homogeny, even if everyone still believes the culture values diversity.

40. David Hassell

There is a high cost associated with building a culture: team retreats, gym memberships, personal and professional development classes. All this is to facilitate the personal evolution of each person who contributes to the company. And, what are our results? In three years, not one employee has voluntarily left, which is a phenomenon that we believe can be replicated at any organisation. We have the receipts to show how much it cost, and we also have uncovered the more obscure internal metrics that impact employee satisfaction and prevent voluntary turnover.

41. Dr. Aubrey Daniels

We can change culture if we change behavior.

42. Neil Degrasse Tyson

Once you have an innovation culture, even those who are not scientists or engineers — poets, actors, journalists — they, as communities, embrace the meaning of what it is to be scientifically literate. They embrace the concept of an innovation culture. They vote in ways that promote it. They don't fight science and they don't fight technology.

43. Paulo Coelho

Culture makes people understand each other better. And if they understand each other better in their soul, it is easier to overcome the economic and political barriers. But first they have to understand that their neighbour is, in the end, just like them, with the same problems, the same questions.

44. Ryan Lilly

Growing a culture requires a good storyteller. Changing a culture requires a persuasive editor.

45. Tony Hsieh

If you get the culture right, most of the other stuff will just take care of itself.

46. Kamil Toume

The real competitive advantage in any business is one word only, which is “people”.

47. Wiley Cerilli

You want to set goals that you can hit, so when you start hitting them, you can celebrate those wins. People start trusting in your way of projecting the business.

48. Anne M. Mulcahy

Employees who believe that management is concerned about them as a whole person — not just an employee — are more productive, more satisfied, more fulfilled. Satisfied employees mean satisfied customers, which leads to profitability.

49. Brian Halligan

The way I think about culture is that modern humans have radically changed the way that they work and the way that they live. Companies need to change the way they manage and lead to match the way that modern humans actually work and live. We're trying to re-craft culture in a way that really matches that. I think that 99% of companies are kind of stuck in the '90s when it comes to their culture.

50. John Mackey

If you are lucky enough to be someone’s employer, then you have a moral obligation to make sure people do look forward to coming to work in the morning.

51. Ken Blanchard and Scott Blanchard

Connect the dots between individual roles and the goals of the organization. When people see that connection, they get a lot of energy out of work. They feel the importance, dignity and meaning in their job.

52. Stephen R. Covey

Always treat your employees exactly as you want them to treat your best customers.

53. David Zinger

Employee engagement is the art and science of engaging people in authentic and recognized connections to strategy, roles, performance, organization, community, relationships, customers, development, energy and happiness to leverage, sustain and transform work into results.

54. Ed Catmull

A hallmark of a healthy creative culture is that its people feel free to share ideas, opinions, and criticisms. Lack of candour, if unchecked, ultimately leads to dysfunctional environments.

55. Frances Frei and Anne Morriss

Culture guides discretionary behavior and it picks up where the employee handbook leaves off. Culture tells us how to respond to an unprecedented service request. It tells us whether to risk telling our bosses about our new ideas, and whether to surface or hide problems. Employees make hundreds of decisions on their own everyday, and culture is our guide. Culture tells us what to do when the CEO isn’t in the room, which is of course most of the time.

56. Ev Williams

When you’re in a small boat, you can see who’s paddling hard and who’s looking around.

57. Julie Winkle Giulioni

Authentic engagement is not available upon demand. It’s less like today’s Keurig and more like the old-style percolator: instead of coffee at the push of a button, coffee grounds and water were put together, with heat applied and time allowed for one to permeate the other.

58. Jessica Herrin

Shaping your culture is more than half done when you hire your team.

59. Frances Hesselbein

Culture does not change because we desire to change it. Culture changes when the organization is transformed; the culture reflects the realities of people working together every day.

60. Jeff Bezos

Part of company culture is path-dependent- it's the lessons you learn along the way.

61. Peter Schutz

The biggest challenge was to restore a dying organization, which was losing money, to growth and profitability. The first steps were not: Cutting costs, developing new products and/or services, inventing clever new marketing concepts, or clever advertising! Instead, the first steps were: Rebuilding a culture where all employees were a family, striving for a “shared” success! The basis for this success turned out to be winning major races again.

62. Bob Parsons

Anything that is measured and watched, improves.

63. Reid Hoffman

No matter how brilliant your mind or strategy, if you’re playing a solo game, you’ll always lose out to a team.

64. Caterina Fake

So often people are working hard at the wrong thing. Working on the right thing is probably more important than working hard.

65. Kevin Rose

A team aligned behind a vision will move mountains. Sell them on your roadmap and don’t compromise — care about the details, the fit and finish.

66. Howard Stevenson

Maintaining an effective culture is so important that it, in fact, trumps even strategy.

67. Teddy Roosevelt

Far and away the best prize that life has to offer is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.

68. Colin Angle

Culture is the magic start-up ingredient.

69. Vern Dosch

I used to believe that culture was ‘soft,’ and had little bearing on our bottom line. What I believe today is that our culture has everything to do with our bottom line, now and into the future.

70. Peter Drucker

Culture eats strategy for breakfast.

71. Bryan Walker

Culture is like the wind. It is invisible; yet its effect can be seen and felt.

72. Jacob Morgan

Corporate culture is really hard to define; it’s the side effects of working for your organization.

73. Denise Lee Yohn

With a single, unifying drive behind both your culture and your brand, you reap the benefits of a focused and aligned workforce.

74. David Mattin

There’s really no such thing as internal culture any more. Your culture is always public, and it’s your most powerful, public-facing asset or liability.

75. Betty Thompson

Culture is what motivates and retains talented employees.

76. Larry Senn

Culture is not an initiative. Culture is the enabler of all initiatives.

77. Tracy Streckenbach

Culture is about performance and making people feel good about how they contribute to the whole.

78. HubSpot’s Culture Code

Culture is to recruiting as product is to marketing.

79. Brian Kristofek

Being a great place to work is the difference between being a good company and a great company.

80. Barbara Landes

It's important to create a culture of innovation — one that both values and rewards risk.

81. Arne Sorenson

A big part of our people-first culture is treating people with respect and transparency.

82. Barry Liber

Be passionate about the culture and the business, and remain positive because it inspires others.

83. Gina Lau

Our secret weapon for building the best culture is open and honest feedback.

84. Jorge Paulo Lemann

The greatest asset of a company is its people.

85. Jay Samit

Most companies overlook the most basic of all training functions: the onboarding of new employees into their corporate culture.

86. Mike Zani

Company culture is what employees live and breathe every day in the workplace.

87. Walter Lippmann

Culture is the name for what people are interested in, their thoughts, their models,
the books they read, and the speeches they hear

88. Anonymous

The beauty of the world lies in the diversity of its people.

89. Thomas Wolfe

Culture is the arts elevated to a set of beliefs.

90. Doug Conant

To win in the marketplace, you must first win in the workplace.

91. Ruth Benedict

The crucial differences which distinguish human societies and human beings are not biological. They are cultural.

92. Robert Alan

Cultural differences should not separate us from each other, but rather cultural diversity brings a collective strength that can benefit all of humanity.

93. Malcolm Bradbury

Culture is a way of coping with the world by defining it in detail.

94. John Abbot

Every man’s ability may be strengthened or increased by culture.

95. Johan Huizinga

If we are to preserve culture we must continue to create it.

96. Albert Camus

Without culture, and the relative freedom it implies, society, even when perfect, is but a jungle. This is why any authentic creation is a gift to the future.

97. Rob Silzer

Financial Resources may be the lifeblood of a company, but human resources are the brains.

98. Enamul Haque

The sustainable success of digital transformation comes from a carefully planned organizational change management process that meets two key objectives, one being the company culture, and the other one is empowering its employees.

99. Dele Ola

A rigid structure does not give room for adaptability
and change. A rigid structure turns people into slaves of rules, procedures, policies, and practices.

100. Rajib Lochan Dhibar

A tree cannot become big & huge without its leaves & roots.

Takeaway

Exceptional leaders know the importance of workplace culture for their teams. The most successful firms and organizations understand that their people hold the secret to their success.

Employees must believe that they are contributing to a goal greater than just the business. That's how you'll not only be able to establish a company culture that values employees just as much as revenues but additionally motivate employees to be high performers too.

We hope that these quotes inspired all of the leaders and their teams to prioritize the culture over anything else!