April 10, 2016
Great cultures
Culture is driven by our values. And our values are shaped by our beliefs about how the world works.
Have you ever tried to talk someone out of their beliefs and into yours? How’d that work for you?
Right.
If you want to have any chance of changing your team’s beliefs, you can’t tell them what to think. Our beliefs are shaped by our experiences. So if you want to change beliefs, give people a new experience.
What experience would demonstrate the value you want? Whether it’s service, excellence, innovation or any other value – design an experience. There are stories about this in The Culture Blueprint.
Meditate on that question. Use the ultimate culture shaping experience with Open Space Technology, or I can help you do it.
March 30, 2016
Culture of Chaos
From a culture standpoint, there are remarkable similarities between the original Obama campaign and that of Trump.
Most of what we know about culture is actually artifacts of culture. They are the language, signs and symbols that resonate on such a deep emotional level that they shape our present and our future. As author Dave Logan said, “Hitler couldn’t even fire a gun and he took over most of Europe by the sheer power of his words.”
Take a look at the accompanying graphic to see how both Obama and Trump use slogan, symbols and status to rally their base, while the Clinton campaign struggles with the concepts.
Trump – “Make American Great Again.”
Notice how it tells a story by referencing a great past and promising a better future. The words inherently resonate with anyone who loves America but hates the status quo.
Obama – “Yes We Can.”
The phrase is almost hypnotic because it’s a positive word, combined with a community word and a word that means potential. It’s perfectly vague while emotionally bonding. (hat tip to Culture Game author Dan Mezick for noticing the NLP in this)
Clinton – “Hillary for America”
The phrase itself is from every campaign of the past three decades (Person-for-Branch of Government) so it’s automatically connected with the old and the status quo. And it has her name in it making it self-referential with no inherently positive words.
Trump – The hat
Brilliant because it’s an actual tangible item which makes it literally real. It’s like a crown he wears and everyone can buy one and wear one, like wearing the jersey of their favorite athlete.
Obama – The poster
The striking image with the single positive word of Hope, brings back both the revolutionary spirit of a Che Guevara with the pride of the classic Kennedy campaign poster.
Hillary – What?
I can’t find an icon for Hillary except for this attempt at an iconic image to convey the modern woman with a sun behind her back.
America is upset with the government that seems to constantly either get the country in trouble or simply shut it down in a temper tantrum because they can’t get along.
People want an outsider, like Obama was in his first campaign. Trump has never been involved in politics, while Hillary has spent 24 years being guarded by the Secret Service.
If Hillary wins, I believe it will be swayed by those against Trump as opposed to for Hillary.
I think people are slowly beginning to realize that campaigns are not about policy and experience. There is something much more tribal that’s going on here. More on that soon.
January 19, 2016
Great cultures ,Popular Articles
We’ve all had it happen…
Someone does amazingly well in an interview and then they turn out to be a not-so-great hire and they don’t help the culture.
So how can we prevent that?
When you’re clear on your core values, you can then design interview questions based on those values. Ideally they’re questions that don’t necessarily correspond to one’s résumé. Instead they feel out how well the person actually lives the values and has a desire to live by them.
You can see how Zappos does it here.
Or check this out for how MindValley does it.
Of course, I’m a big fan of upgrading the team you already have. If you’d like to upgrade your team, or take a high-performing team to the next level, let’s talk.
January 7, 2016
Great cultures ,Hacks ,Popular Articles
NOTE: This blog is the #1 overall hack, for the #1 HIRING HACK, please click here.
“Don’t talk about how to hack culture! That will scare corporate clients!”
That’s what people told me.
They were so wrong! The bigger the company, the more they want the hacks. Why? Because hacking is all about empowering anyone to create a shift. Big companies know how hard it is to create massive change. Culture hacks allow change to happen FAST.
First, let’s briefly define what hacking is:
Hacking is finding a vulnerable point in a system, and exploiting that vulnerability to your advantage. The end result is very little investment with maximum gain.
If that made no sense, don’t worry. The hacks work without you needing to know how they work.
I knew about this #1 hack for a long time, but didn’t realize how important it was until I was working with a major company that wanted to implement its core values and they were running into a problem:
People put working hard and driving results over each of those core values. And because of that, they’re not core values. If they were core, they would never be sacrificed.
Changing to a Core values company is a big step. It can take over a year. So how can they change fast?
Well, to diagnose a culture all we have to do is look at their meetings. Meetings are a subset of culture. And the first data within meetings we look at is people’s relationship to time.
Cultures that are on time inherently respect each other. Cultures that start late and go late tolerate behavior that advances the individual over the culture as a whole.
When I was at Zappos, CEO Tony Hsieh was always on time or early. Never ever did I see him late.
This is a very small hack, but it has a massive impact. If you feel resistance from yourself or anyone else, simply run a 2 week experiment where people have to be on time. Then let the results speak for themselves.
