Culture Making - creativity shaping work culture
We focus on culture making because a brilliant strategy will fail unless it is rooted in in brilliant culture.
Culture making is the process of actively and intentionally shaping the cultural values, beliefs, and practices of a community or organisation. Using creative, social and tactile thinking can take this vital element of a successful organisation from a passive statement on a screen to being felt through the tangible, meaningful work we can all see.
Proactive not Reactive
Culture making is a proactive approach to developing your team or organisation, as it goes beyond simply reacting to cultural trends and instead seeks to actively shape and influence cultural norms and values. Its an act of collaboration that needs involvement across teams and structures, internally and externally.
For example there is a trend for incorporating social responsibility (and this is a brilliant thing -according to a study, 55% of buyers are willing to spend more on products or services from a company that’s known to be socially responsible!) Some companies jump on this trend, green or community washing with vauge promises or representation in marketing. A culture-making view would embed this trend through active connection with the local community, making time to be with customers in a new way, from offering skill sharing workshops to encouraging employee and community collaborations or elevating local suppliers before global.
Reset Cultural Weaknesses
When we focus on culture at work, sometimes weaknesses and toxicities rise to the surface. Injustices, biases and experiences that impact people unfairly are given space to emerge. Sometimes these are hidden or unconscious, sometimes they are not. Culture-making offers a way to recognise and reset, developing and embedding new cultural practices and traditions. We can strengthen existing positive cultural practices, and adapt outdated cultural practices through creative, social and empathy based activities such as listening circles instead of consulting staff, coaching groups to foster collective problem solving and visual representations to strengthen and diversify communication. Another advantage of these less traditional approaches is that they create space for people with quieter voices or overlooked experiences to express their ideas, needs and preferences.
Culture making includes:
Identifying the cultural values, beliefs, and practices that are important to the community or organisation
Exploring these cultural elements through creative, social, practical and empathy focused group activities
Collaborating on a ‘Statement of Intent’ to promote and foster these cultural values, beliefs, and practices
Taking a systems view and considering cultural adjustments across, governance, team and client policies and processes, including identifying cultural leads across the organisation
Using regular team and 1:1 coaching and reflective practice to support implementation and make adjustments as needed
Culture making is the explorative, exciting and challenging work of establishing team culture, its the stuff we see and hear and the stuff we feel at work. But its also the nitty gritty of how we interact and act every day, the rules we follow, the things we expect of each other. And its ever-evolving and changing as people and the world change.
If your plans are great, you’ve got a fab team and you care about the work- and things still are not working- it might be time for some culture-making.
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