Culture Building
Getting Intentional With What You Want And How To Get There.
I recently spent some time in NYC this summer working with a client (both leadership team and full staff) exploring culture.
Will unpack things further over the fall I am sure, but one of the things that jumped at the end the engagement was how one of the team shared that some of the activities and conversations we had wouldn’t have been possible 5 years ago.
A good insight for me in terms of designing experiences (eg. where has this group been? where are they now? what is possible? etc), but I also took a chance to give them credit on how far they have come and the work already put in.
It Takes Time
As demonstrated at Arsenal and what excited me abut this recent experience was that I was able to turn a previous issue of this newsletter into an interactive keynote on the role of individual performance in a team setting or culture.
It was a risk to do something “new” in the moment but found so much more flow in the talk when speaking from a place of enjoyment (my chosen content) and truth (lived experience).
The reason I bring this back up is that Mikel Arteta is role-modelling for us once again.
I can’t wait for the book from or on him, or when he joins a podcast to talk about what they have done so far.
Below, please pay attention to the language he uses to address the squad and welcome a new signing (also named Mikel) and team member just this week.
“Mikel, welcome to our home.
We are all responsible for everybody, for everything.
It means that we have to tell him straight away, how we live, how we talk, what is our language, what we expect from each other and he can adapt as quickly as possible to our team.”
Incredible.
What is this place?
How are we accountable?
What is my role role?
How can we collectively facilitate onboarding?
I get that not every environment aims to be high performing or is willing to truly invest in what it takes to be one. But I feel many environments want the upsides of a high performing context (results, safety, openness, trust, collaboration etc) without the time and investment.
It doesn’t just happen.
Learn more about the role language and storytelling plays in change at
Narrative Dynamics.
Wonderful insight. I see this approach being applied with clients as well. Defining a company culture as a way to also mirror one’s expectations of clients, in order to truly work in harmony. Undefined expectations of process or delivery (not project expectations) will eventually reveal cracks that may hinder a projects success. Just as a client comes in with an expectation of services, it should also be ok to define a client’s participatory role.