I can't speak about culture "at large" but next week I'm going to have a live discussion and Q&A with a community of designers about the question "Can we design a corporate culture?".
I obviously have few strong opinions but not a definitive answer on that, and I'm curious about what questions and ideas the designers will raise.
I haven't read the "Life after lifestyle" essay yet but I agree about the risks of a sort of "culture-washing" if I interpreted it correctly: the idea of corporate culture in particular has been rendered flat and fluffy by many companies for employer branding and recruting purposes, for example.
We need to make corporate culture tangible again, I think.
We need markers, reference points. I like the framing of knowledge+people+places+practices that you mentioned. I like the old Netflix definition of culture as who you hire, fire and promote: it's simple, but it makes the underlying complexity more tangible.
I'm also inspired by the idea of curation.
I toyed with the idea of calling myself "organizational archeologist" recently and one of the things archeologists do is to curate what they find along the way: and that's something that I do regularly, making people and teams aware that their team or corporate culture allows some behaviors while punishes others — to what end?
(OK, bye, I have loooots of reading to do on this topic 🙂)
I can't speak about culture "at large" but next week I'm going to have a live discussion and Q&A with a community of designers about the question "Can we design a corporate culture?".
I obviously have few strong opinions but not a definitive answer on that, and I'm curious about what questions and ideas the designers will raise.
I haven't read the "Life after lifestyle" essay yet but I agree about the risks of a sort of "culture-washing" if I interpreted it correctly: the idea of corporate culture in particular has been rendered flat and fluffy by many companies for employer branding and recruting purposes, for example.
We need to make corporate culture tangible again, I think.
We need markers, reference points. I like the framing of knowledge+people+places+practices that you mentioned. I like the old Netflix definition of culture as who you hire, fire and promote: it's simple, but it makes the underlying complexity more tangible.
I'm also inspired by the idea of curation.
I toyed with the idea of calling myself "organizational archeologist" recently and one of the things archeologists do is to curate what they find along the way: and that's something that I do regularly, making people and teams aware that their team or corporate culture allows some behaviors while punishes others — to what end?
(OK, bye, I have loooots of reading to do on this topic 🙂)
One of the most relevant pieces on what culture really means and how we can continue to build a better future as a community.
Honored to be on the journey together.