Values, Not Behaviors: The Culture Car Wash
When you change companies, keep the values that got you hired but recalibrate the behaviors to the new culture.
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~months to results
- Steps
- 4
- Confidence
- 90%
Strong company cultures indoctrinate deep behaviors that don't transfer. Baxley's model: your new employer hired you for the VALUES of the place you left, not its behaviors. So decompress between roles, consciously hold onto the values (attention to detail, product excellence), and re-express them in the new culture's accepted behaviors rather than importing the old ones wholesale.
Origin
Baxley's framework from his own failed Pinterest transition, using Apple's internal 'car wash' metaphor (attributed to Tim Cook or Steve Jobs) and contrasting his outcome with Hiroki Asai's successful Apple-to-Airbnb move.
Core principles
- 01Powerful cultures embed behaviors so deep they infuse how you act even away from work
- 02The new place hired you for your old culture's values, not its behaviors
- 03Immigrating between strong cultures is like moving countries; shared values ease the transition
- 04Give yourself decompression time to run the 'car wash' before starting
- 05Failing in one role is survivable; your career is not your life
How to run it
- 1
Give yourself recalibration time between roles
Don't go straight from one strong culture into another; leave a gap to shed accumulated behaviors before you start.
Pro tip Baxley cites Hiroki Asai leaving a gap between Apple and Airbnb as a key reason he thrived there.
Watch out Baxley left Apple on a Friday and started Pinterest on Monday, giving himself no time to recalibrate.
- 2
Separate your values from your behaviors
Name the values you want to keep (e.g. attention to detail, product excellence, doing everything for the user) distinct from the specific behaviors of your old company.
- 3
Read the new culture's accepted behaviors
Observe how things are actually done; look for explicit signals about what the culture needs that your old culture took for granted.
Pro tip Pinterest's 'Say the hard thing' posters were a signal Baxley should have read: it revealed a norm Apple never needed to remind anyone of.
Watch out Assuming your old behaviors are correct ('very direct, fighting hard') can make you bounce off the new culture.
- 4
Re-express your values in the new culture's language
Hold the values constant but choose behaviors that land in the new environment, asking how those values are best expressed here.
Pro tip Baxley expressed the same values far more successfully at ThoughtSpot than at Pinterest by adapting the behaviors.
In the wild
Baxley moved directly from Apple to Pinterest and behaved as he had at Apple: direct, fighting hard. Pinterest's culture was different, evidenced by conference-room posters reading 'Say the hard thing' (something no one at Apple needed reminding to do). His stint of about 18 months was not successful.
→ A friend described it as 'you bounced off the culture'; Baxley later concluded he should have kept Apple's values but adopted Pinterest's behaviors.
Common mistakes
Importing your old company's behaviors wholesale
Behaviors are culture-specific; what reads as excellence in one place reads as abrasive or misaligned in another.
Skipping the decompression gap
Going straight from one strong culture to another leaves you carrying accumulated norms that don't fit, with no time to shed them.
Is it for you?
Best for
Senior operators moving between strong-culture companies, especially leaving a dominant culture like Apple.
Not ideal for
Moves between weak or similar cultures where behavioral recalibration is minor.
From the transcript
“the new place hired you because of the values of the organization you left, but not the behaviors”
“try to hold on to those values, but then think, okay, how are those values best expressed in this culture”
“Turns out there's a car wash you need to go through when you leave Apple as well”
“Say the hard thing”
From the episode
35 years of product design wisdom from Apple, Disney, Pinterest, and beyond
Bob Baxley