We had our Chief Product Officer Bret Taylor join us for a fireside chat in NYC today. He was formally at Google, Board member at Twitter and the CTO at Facebook. One thing he shared today, stood out.

The most important factor to weathering the storm of change is culture.

He shared an example of Facebook when they needed to reorient their platform towards a mobile strategy when their primary revenue and focus was on the web application. It caused huge disruption and consternation within the company, however, the ability to leverage the bonds between people, the innovative and fast-moving culture pulled them through a very challenging time.

Facebook lived in the old offices of Sun Microsystems in Menlo Park. As a symbol for employees to never forgot how quickly technology companies can become irrelevant and to innovate and move fast, he asked to leave the room signs from the old company where they were. 1990’s signs sat there to remind them they were building a new company on the ashes of one that no longer existed.

Culture weathers the storm. Don’t take your eye off the ball.

Colin