Culture: the heart of your business - Issue 16
How to build it for everybody and keep it. Plus: run your own culture workshop!
Welcome to another edition of ProductiveGrowth 🌱, weekly stories about productivity, leadership, motivation, and anything else that helps us and our teams grow and be more productive. Plus, industry news on the companies, products, and services that allow us to work less and do more.
TL;DR
Culture will define how you and your teamwork every day. Not having a company culture is your company’s culture. This week we talk about team how to define you’re company’s culture
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EDITOR’S PICKS
🧭 How to stick to culture when everything seems lost
Workplace culture is hard to establish, but it’s a fundamental element of your company’s success. During especially difficult times (like the ones we’re living now), it can become a lifeguard of your values and the only way to connect with your team. So, how do you build it when face-to-face interactions aren’t possible? This article from Gallup explores new ways of leading your team so you can keep them aligned with your bigger purpose, like recognizing your employees and their needs. so culture becomes a helpful way of guiding rather than another set of rules to follow.
👩💻 Workplace culture doesn’t have to mean foosball and free snacks
I’m all for free food and fun perks at the office, but WIRED senior writer Arielle Pardes makes a really good point in this opinion piece about Silicon Valley and the way it has shaped workplace culture. Even when I disagree with some of her points, I found the reflection around it really interesting: making offices fun and malleable seems, in some cases, to only bring about disorganization and unclear work-life boundaries. Also, this way of working has migrated to some companies where the benefits you get from it (like more creativity flow) are not really necessary. What I got from this reading, though, was that culture is not only shaped by what we do but by what we value the most; without a purpose behind it, it’s just free ice cream.
There’s a lot said about making our companies inclusive and diverse, but the numbers show that we haven’t done enough. Although this article from Forbes discusses leadership in 2020, I truly believe it applies to 2021 as well. The need to build cultures where everybody feels like they belong — and they actually do — is an emergency. We need to not only to address inequality but make our companies’ innovation spectrums wider. Optimizing diversity also involves more than one variable, so building workplaces where everyone is considered important and valuable is a complex but necessary job for all of our leaders.
💼 “Culture can change, and has to change over time”
Crafting company culture is an art, and there’s nothing like learning from its biggest artists. In this interview, businessman Ben Horowitz talks to Foundr about culture: what it takes to move it, the importance of cohesion between culture and strategy, and even the lessons a prison gang taught him on leadership. His years of experience in a diversity of companies and contexts make his vision even more interesting, adding a touch of care to everything he does. I found it really delightful and insightful!
1 Quote
“The secret of change is to focus all your energy not on fighting the old but on building the new.” - Socrates
1 Question
What’s the core of your company’s culture?
DISCOVER
Finding the specific project management software that fulfills all of your needs can feel like an impossible task to achieve but worry no more: the amazing Mashable team researched all the top contenders and ranked a bunch of management apps based on cost, easiness, types of projects and reviews. Discover your new favorite here!
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Edited by: Lauren Maslen.
