Back in 2012 I took a class on organizational culture at the Berkeley Haas School of Business. At the time I was a self-taught, rough-edged manager looking for any guideposts on the very difficult path toward becoming a leader. It was in this class that I first began to understand organizational culture, not as something that was emergent from the activities of a team, but as something that could be shaped intentionally with purpose.

The professor defined culture as, “a system of shared values, norms, beliefs, expectations and assumptions held by members that distinguishes an organization from others.” That’s an academic-sounding and much less creepy way of saying every company is its own cult, with its own leaders, heroes, language, rewards, ceremonies, artifacts, and kool-aid used to reinforce desired behaviors.

During class, we talked through examples from many companies: Microsoft, Netflix, Cisco, Google, Uber, and more. We learned that you can’t always judge a culture comparatively (e.g. is Microsoft culture better than Amazon’s or Netflix’s or Uber’s) but we can ask whether a culture is well aligned to the goals of an organization and how it compares with society as a whole. One company and one singular artifact hooked my attention: The Nordstrom Employee Handbook.

For many years, new employees to Nordstrom were greeted with a simple 5x8" card on their very first day on the job. Take a read: