When I started my own agency SuperFriendly in 2012, I was the CEO—but only in the way that, in any 1-person business, that person is the CEO, and the janitor, and the receptionist, and the accountant, and the everything that the business needs. I’ve heard it referred to as the “Chief Everything Officer.”

At that time, CEO didn’t really mean anything, which is why I didn’t call myself that. Occasionally, I’d refer to myself as the President only when asked by a banker or procurement person somewhere; it was technically correct, as that was the title my lawyer wrote down in the Articles of Incorporation I signed when starting the corporation.

In practice though, I was a designer, art director, creative director, strategist, copywriter, project manager, and developer; that’s what my clients needed and I was the only employee, so that’s what I did.

Then I started to hire contractors to help me. I started by hiring project manager, then a developer, then a designer, then an illustrator. Then more of those folks. Four years later, I had a dozen contractors working on various projects with me. Then 25 contractors. Then 40.

Then 50 who were working with each other, but not with me. (Then 60, then 70.) They weren’t working with me because I wasn’t the designer, or the art director, or the creative director, or anything. Somebody else was each of those things, someone I hired to do that job because they were better at it than I was and seemed to enjoy it more too. I wasn’t anything on my own agency’s projects and accounts.

I was working on something else. As I saw this happening, I had decided that I wanted to learn something new. I wanted to learn how to be a CEO. Not the de facto “Chief Everything Officer” that you have to be when it’s your company. An actual Chief Executive Officer.

But what the heck did that mean?

I tried not to worry too much about filling what the job description should be and instead what was needed. What wasn’t needed was direction around craft or process; the people I hired were already great at that and didn’t need me to interfere with that. But, because of SuperFriendly’s business model of every team consisting of contractors and not full-time employees, people would often be working with a whole team of people they never worked with before. The question they’d often ask each other that’d eventually make its way to me was, “What’s the SuperFriendly way to do this?”

So I made an orientation video.

It outlined a few different kinds of expectations around things like what success meant, when to check in with me (and when not to), what types of failures were acceptable and unacceptable, and more.

I started working on a handbook with my managing director Crystal Vitelli. I hosted weekly “aiming” sessions with our Directors and Producers to make sure they—and we—were all pointed in the same direction in regards to where each account was going.

I workshopped deck after deck of manifestos, trying to articulate and re-articulate a clear mission, vision, and strategy for the company.

In short—though I couldn’t have named it as such at the time—I was working on culture.

Culture

I never really paid too much attention to what culture was, for a few reasons.

First, growing up where my ethnic background as a mixed Pakistani + Filipino kid was almost always in the minority, “culture” was the stuff that made people “weird.” It was the unique outfits certain people would wear or the interesting smells at “international potluck day” at church. All of these things were attributed to their “culture.”

Later on, as I became a young working professional designer, I scouted agencies I admired and wanted to work at. The coolest ones had pool tables, catered lunches, and frequent field trips out of the office. All of this stuff was also attributed to their “culture.”

At the time, I couldn’t reconcile how and why culture made some things weird and other things cool. So I mostly ignored the idea. (I now realize that )

Years later, as I was learning to be a CEO, I started to research culture. It seemed to be what other CEOs were talking about a lot, and I was happy to imitate for a while on my way to carving out my own version. I looked up the definition:

The customs, arts, social institutions, and achievements of a particular nation, people, or other social group

I understood the words, but couldn’t figure out how it applied.

I read and loved Daniel Coyle’s The Culture Code. His explanations:

CULTURE: from the Latin cultus, which means care.

Culture is a set of living relationships working toward a shared goal. It’s not something you are. It’s something you do.

I liked these ideas a lot—they were romantic—but I couldn’t figure out how they applied.

Then I came across an idea that made it make sense to me. I wish I could remember if it was something I read, something someone said to me, or a jumble of ideas I remixed into my own version. Nevertheless, I understood in simple terms what culture is:

Culture is what’s normal in any given environment.

In my country (USA), eating a cheeseburger and french fries is the culture. In my home growing up, eating lumpia (Filipino spring rolls) and dal (Pakistani split lentils and peas) was the culture.

At some agencies, people go home right at 5pm. At others, staying until 7pm or 8pm is routine.

Sometimes, the culture is what it is because that’s how it’s been. My brother and I ate lumpia growing up because my mom ate lumpia when she was growing up. Her parents did too, and their parents probably did as well.

Other times, culture can be designed from scratch. Who’s job is it to do that?

CEOs design the culture

Many cultural activities start from the ground up. At one agency I worked at, two people brought in their Nintendo DS’s started playing Mario Kart every day after lunch. Seeing how much fun they were having every day, the rest of us eventually bought DS’s too and we ended up having company-wide Mario Kart battles every day after lunch—for years. Culture is what’s normal in a given environment, and, at that office, it eventually became normal to play Mario Kart every day after lunch.

No one told us to do this. No one told the original two people to start this.

Perhaps more importantly, no one told the original two people they couldn’t do this. And no one told our larger group later on that we had to stop.

There was one person who easily could have: our boss, the CEO.

At any point, he could have said that this was unacceptable. We likely would have stopped, for fear of losing our jobs.

And, with a lack of words, because he didn’t say anything, he affirmed that this was ok. We’d occasionally look over at him while we played to make sure we weren’t doing anything against the rules, against what was normal. His lack of reaction was the amount of approval we needed to keep going.

That ability to legitimate—or to revoke—behaviors with a few words: that’s power and influence. Few people at a company if any have that kind of power and influence like the CEO does.

The job of a CEO is to design the culture.

From my own experience and observation of other CEOs both directly and indirectly, I think a CEO’s job is to use their power and influence over the people who have agreed to work for and with them to design the conditions for success to the best of their ability. One of the most powerful ways they can do this is to define what is and isn’t normal. That could be explicit in defining rules and policies, and it can also be implicit in what they tolerate, allow, or encourage.

CEO as an idea

“CEO” is a specific title at many companies, but it can also be an idea. By definition, a CEO is the highest-ranking person in a group. In tech, I’ve regularly heard the idea that sometimes a product owner, project manger, creative director, or other role is seen as “the CEO of the project,” which is another way of saying that person is in charge. And as the person in charge, they have the most power and influence to create culture, to establish what’s normal.

In other domains, that power and influence goes to people with different titles. On your team at work, that might go to someone with “Director“ or “Manager” in their title. In families, that person may have the title of “Mom” or “Dad” or “Grandma.” In sports, that’s a “Captain.” In book club, that’s the “Organizer.” It’s the orchestra’s “Conductor,” the dojo’s “Sensei,” and the trail hike’s “leader.” In a town, it’s the “Mayor.” In a country, that’s the “President,” “Prime Minister,” “King,” or “Queen.”

But the responsibility is the same.

The power and responsibility of designing culture

Like Spider-Man’s Uncle Ben said, “With great power comes great responsibility.” In the case of a CEO or other person in charge, a big portion of that responsibility refers to the culture that is created, whether intentionally or unintentionally. Unfortunately, it’s “unintentionally” a lot of the time.

For example, in many company cultures, working long hours is a badge of honor. Yes, part of that is due to the glorified hustle culture in today’s zeitgeist, but few realize that it’s top down too. It isn’t hard to find the plethora of “should CEOs work 7 days a week?” and “why the CEO should be the first person in the office and the last to leave” articles out there. Some of the most power and influence a CEO can have is their example.

A few years ago, I heard a story of a CEO who started their own policy to “leave by example.” Despite always having more work to do, they’d make a point to very visibly walk out of the office at 5pm, even if they continued to work when they got home. It was a signal that going home at that time was ok and normal. Slowly but surely, the office eventually emptied out around 5pm every day.

When I was a senior designer, I worked at an agency where my design director would very loudly ring a bell at 5pm on the dot and then walk out of the office. It was powerful and liberating for me to know that the person in charge of me and my work did this, so I could do it too.

I tell my kids all the time what is and isn’t ok in our house and in our family. Lately, it’s a lot about what feelings are ok to have (read: all of them). Yesterday, I told my 13-year old that it was ok for her to be frustrated, mad, and upset at me. I also try to be aware of my own example and what it signals about what’s normal and ok. My 13-year old is learning how to have limits with the new smartphone we just got her; in addition to the rules we wrote together, I try to have my phone put away most of the time so she knows it’s ok for her to do that too.

I think it’s important to have people in charge who are intentional about both saying and signaling what is ok. This is why the decision of who we elect to public office is crucial. In addition to policies and party lines, what behaviors do they exhibit that they’re signaling as ok?

This is one of the biggest issues I continue to have with Trump as our president. As the person in charge of our country, he sets the culture, for better or worse. (And, from my observation, experience, and perspective, it’s more “worse” than “better.”) What he does and doesn’t do becomes ok and normal. That means that mocking people with disabilities is ok and normal. That praising dictators and autocrats as people who “have done good things” is ok and normal. That grabbing women by the p*ssy is ok and normal. That racist remarks like referring to African nations as “sh*thole countries” and telling American congresswomen to “go back where they came from” are ok and normal.

These things are not ok and normal, at least not to me.

For our president—the CEO of our country—to behave this way makes it seem like these things are ok and normal.

To be clear, I’m not bringing up any of things to make a judgment on Trump’s character; I’m not qualified to do that for him, or for anyone. I’m bringing it up to say that he does not seem to have the track record to be the CEO that creates the culture where the things I want to be ok and normal—equity, opportunity, a rising tide, etc—are ok and normal. Journalist Chris Cuomo explains the behavior as fed-up citizens hiring Trump to do a dirty job, rhetorically asking:

If you’re sending somebody into the jungle, do you really care if they’re a savage?

But we’re not sending him into the jungle. To accept that accepts that we’re all dangerous animals already.

We’re hiring a CEO for the greatest nation on Earth, the land of opportunity, where our tired and poor and homeless and tempest-tost yearn to breathe free. It’s hard to see how a CEO whose plan is to send them “back where they came from” and keep them out creates a culture that makes good on this promise.

Culture shifts

Why does any of this matter? Why does culture matter enough for it to be the main point of focus for the person in charge?

Simon Sinek explains in Leaders Eat Last:

When cultural standards shift… our will to trust and cooperate dilutes… We care less about belonging. In this kind of weak culture, we veer away from doing “the right thing” in favor of doing “the thing that’s right for me.”

It’s not lost on me that that kind of language is at an all-time high with this election on every side of party lines. If we keep this up, we’re headed toward just being the “States of America.”

Since the dawn of humans, we’ve thrived in groups. Protecting the kind of culture that prioritizes “we” over “me” is paramount.

That’s the job of a CEO.

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