"Organizational Culture and Leadership" by Ed Schein: “Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of culture as a concept is that it points us to phenomena that are below the surface, that are powerful in their impact but invisible and to a considerable degree unconscious. In that sense, culture is to a group what personality or character is to an individual.”

At this second level, it is espoused beliefs and values that people understand: openness, for example; unfortunately, these concepts quickly become clichés. Ultimately, underlying assumptions matter most. Schein writes:“Basic assumptions, in the sense in which I want to define that concept, have become so taken for granted that one finds little variation within a social unit. This degree of consensus results from repeated success in implementing certain beliefs and values, as previously described. If a basic assumption comes to be strongly held in a group, members will find behavior based on any other premise inconceivable.” In other words, culture is not something that generates success; it is something it produces.

Companies are founded on their founders' espoused beliefs and values, but until those beliefs and values are proven correct and successful, they are open to debate and change. However, those values and beliefs must slip from conscious to unconscious levels before a company can maintain the “secret sauce” that drove its initial success as it scales. Every member of the company will espouse its beliefs and values in every decision, big or small.Windows phone is cited as an example of cultural power aimed at the negative. Microsoft started Windows Phone due to its incorrect culture and vision at the time. He failed to figure it out; his last actions were to reorganize the company around a "One Microsoft" strategy centered on Windows and buy Nokia to prop up Windows Phone.

On the opposite side, Shein defines leadership in the context of culture:Culture and leadership are two sides of the same coin; neither can be fully understood without the other. Culture defines how a nation or organization defines leadership: who gets promoted and followers. However, some argue that the only important thing a leader can do is create and manage culture; and that an ultimate act of leadership is to destroy a dysfunctional culture.

One example of this kind of destruction was the announcement of Apple's shocking partnership with Microsoft during Steve Jobs' first keynote as interim CEO at the 1997 Boston MacWorld, which was attended by an audible gasp when Jobs said the word Microsoft. His biographer Walter Isaacson described his remarks as "an unplanned sermon": “If we want to move forward and see Apple healthy and prospering again, we have to let go of a few things here. We have to let go of this notion that for Apple to win, Microsoft has to lose. OK?”

Shein again: “Culture as a set of basic assumptions defines for us what to pay attention to, what things mean, how to react emotionally to what is going on, and what actions to take in various kinds of situations. Once we have developed an integrated set of such assumptions—a “thought world” or “mental map”—we will be maximally comfortable with others who share the same set of assumptions and very uncomfortable and vulnerable in situations where different assumptions operate, because either we will not understand what is going on, or, worse, we will misperceive and misinterpret the actions of others.”

The difference between leadership and management is that the former creates and changes cultures, whereas the latter acts within them. This definition of leadership does not mean culture is easy to create or change, nor does it imply that leaders are the only ones who can influence culture. Leadership and culture are conceptually linked in this sense.

Ben Thompson • The Curse of Culture