The Culture You Carry
What great companies teach us about shaping the invisible operating system of our own lives.
We usually talk about culture as something that belongs to organizations. A company’s culture is its shared set of beliefs, practices, and unspoken rules—the invisible operating system that shapes how people show up and what behaviors get rewarded.
But there’s another kind of culture we rarely name: the culture you carry within yourself. The personal operating system you bring into your life, your work, and your life’s work.
Andrew McAfee recently outlined the norms that make great organizations thrive. I think they’re just as useful when we zoom in to the individual level:
Speed. Organizations thrive on short cycles of iteration. You can, too. Not everything needs a five-year plan. The faster you run small experiments—whether in your work habits, your health routines, or your creative projects—the faster you discover what actually moves you forward.
Ownership. Companies work best when decision-making is decentralized. For the individual, this means refusing to outsource your agency. You’re the CEO of your own attention. Autonomy starts with how you choose to engage with your days.
Science. Great teams lean on evidence, not just opinion. On a personal level, this is about tuning in to data that actually matters—not the vanity metrics of hustle culture, but real signals of energy, well-being, and progress. This is where the Slipstream philosophy comes in: pay attention to what makes you feel attuned, not just what looks productive on paper.
Openness. Cultures flourish when people feel safe to speak up. Applied inwardly, openness means not shutting down your own voice. It’s allowing the vulnerable truths—your doubts, your intuitions, your desires—to have a seat at the table of your decision-making.
And then there’s failure. Great companies treat failure as learning. For us, this is the antidote to perfectionism. Each “failed” attempt is a data point in your personal science experiment.
What strikes me is that all these norms point to a way of being that’s less about rigid control and more about flow. In Slipstream terms: you’re not muscling your way through life with discipline alone.
You’re shaping the culture of your inner world so that iteration, agency, evidence, and openness naturally pull you forward.
That’s what culture is: not just what an organization does, but what you practice every day until it becomes your way of being.
What is one small cultural norm you want to establish in your own life right now?