Engaging Company Culture

Engaging company cultures have empowered, creative, and growth oriented team members leading company culture events. Through empowerment, employees are given the decision making authority and independence to decide what activities bring out the best in the team. Through creativity, employees can be resourceful and come up with activities that are out of the box and meaningful for the team. Through a focus on growth-oriented activities, employees can initiate programs that integrate both learning and fun.

What’s your company culture like?

Starting your venture

Bill Gross said in a TEDTalk that timing was the single most important attribute to startup success.

There’s no science to when’s a good time to start a venture. However, waiting for the idea to be perfect, or wanting to have all the “necessary” data points in the world to make the launch decision or just plain waiting probably won’t do much good to your “exclusive” idea.

Ship your idea. Gather feedback from prospects/customers. Iterate based on learnings. Keep going!

Am I hunting Antelope or Field Mice?

A lion is fully capable of capturing, killing, and eating a field mouse. But it turns out that the energy required to do so exceeds the caloric content of the mouse itself. So a lion that spent its day hunting and eating field mice would slowly starve to death. A lion can’t live on field mice. A lion needs antelope. Antelope are big animals. They take more speed and strength to capture and kill, and once killed, they provide a feast for the lion and her pride. A lion can live a long and happy life on a diet of antelope. The distinction is important. Are you spending all your time and exhausting all your energy catching field mice? In the short term it might give you a nice, rewarding feeling. But in the long run you’re going to die. So ask yourself at the end of the day, “Did I spend today chasing mice or hunting antelope?”

The above excerpt is taken from Tim Ferriss17 Questions That Changed My Life who had quoted Newt Gingrich, former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives using the above analogy.

Sun. Light. Power.

Sunlight is very important for us and provides many benefits.

The benefits of sunlight are:

Sleep at night. Early morning sunlight in particular seems to help people get to sleep at night. 

Weight loss. Morning light also seems to help people keep the fat off.

Boosting serotonin. Sunlight helps boost a chemical in our brain called serotonin which can give us more energy, be positive, and focused. Higher levels of serotonin correlate with better mood and feelings of satisfaction and calmness, and lower levels link to depression and anxiety.

Eye health. Moderate amounts of sun over one’s lifetime helps to maintain good eye health.

Here’s two good resources on sunlight and health : more benefits of sunlight and health. Why Sunlight Is So Good For You

You made it

What’s your success criteria?

What makes you feel like you’ve made it? Personally? Professionally? Overall?

Is it financial success, family success, social contribution, personal well being, or making the world a better place?

Is it enough to make it there or should you be thriving in where you want to be?

Have you made it to where ever you wanted to be and proud of it?

Let’s go for a walk

Walking has many benefits. A 30 minute walk can boost our creativity, energy levels, and get us refreshed among many other benefits!

Mayo Clinic states regular brisk walking can help you:

  • Maintain a healthy weight and lose body fat
  • Prevent or manage various conditions, including heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure, cancer and type 2 diabetes
  • Improve cardiovascular fitness
  • Strengthen your bones and muscles
  • Improve muscle endurance
  • Increase energy levels
  • Improve your mood, cognition, memory and sleep
  • Improve your balance and coordination
  • Strengthen immune system
  • Reduce stress and tension

How’s your walking technique?

Draft to Publish

Today is Leap Day 2024.

What ideas do you have saved for a future date to put them into action?

What emails do you have sitting in your Drafts folder to send?

Why are you sitting on the sidelines when you know you’re prepared for the game?

Are you waiting for someone’s permission, approval, or acknowledgement?

What blog have you drafted that you have not published yet? (On that note, I’m hitting the Publish button now!)

Take the Leap!

Effective Corporate Training

In Carol S. Dweck’s ground breaking book, Mindset The New Psychology of Success How We Can Learn To Fulfill Our Potential, she shares how to make corporate training programs effective.

She mentions:

Look for talented managers who also embody a growth mindset.

Train leaders, managers, and employees to believe in growth, in addition to training them in the specifics of effective communication and mentoring.

Creating a growth-mindset environment in which people can thrive which involves: presenting skills as learnable, conveying that the organization values learning and perseverance, not just ready-made genius or talent, giving feedback in a way that promotes learning and future success and presenting managers as resources for learning.

A belief in human development can make corporate training programs effective and help generate the results needed.

Talent vs Skill

What is Talent and what is Skill? Are they the same or different?

Talent is a natural ability to gain a skill or set of skills. Skill is the ability to complete a set of tasks well. Skills are learned and we get better at a craft by practicing intentionally over a period of time. If we want to become better writers, athletes, teachers (or at anything), we can because it’s an skill or set of skills. The beauty of identifying and understanding that something is a talent or a skill is liberating and profound. Once we find clarity that it’s an skill, we can learn and become better at it. Having talent does not mean that hard work, discipline, effort (and others) are not that required or important to become excellent at a craft or a task. While some who are talented can understand or do certain tasks better because of their “natural ability” or “gift”, talent by itself would not be enough for them to be excellent or world-class in their craft.

Here’s a simple distinction between Skill and Talent.

SkillTalent
DefinitionAn ability developed with practiceA natural affinity for a skill
ExplanationAn ability that, with practice, a person can become an expert inAn ability one is born with that, when nurtured, can develop more quickly than those without the
innate talent
ImpactsAnyone willing to work on itFewer people, who must be born with it
DevelopmentTraining, education, coaching, and practiceNature, along with training,
mentoring, education, and practice
Source : https://www.upwork.com/resources/difference-between-skill-and-talent

Seth Godin, author of The Practice Shipping Creative Work says that “It’s insulting to call a professional talented. She’s skilled, first and foremost. Many people have talent, but only a few care enough to show up fully, to earn their skill. Skill is rarer than talent. Skill is earned. Skill is available to anyone who cares enough.”

So was Micheal Jordan talented or skilled or both when it comes to basketball? Was Mira Rai a “gifted” trail runner than other runners? Is Warren Buffet more skilled or talented or a mix of both at analyzing businesses and financial numbers?

Custom Work Hours

What if employee(s) chose the hours they want to work for in a week instead of a regular Monday through Friday from 9am-5pm as long as the total came to be close to 40 hours per week?

Would employees’ productivity increase or decrease because of the work time flexibility, employees choosing their shift based on their schedule and time(s) they feel or are most productive, and the employers prioritizing results over quantity of hours logged by employees?

Is Custom Work Hours the next iteration of the current work model (from an industrial era system of 9 to 5 and hybrid office/remote work model)?

Why do companies still have a 9 to 5 Monday through Friday work model? Is this work schedule really serving the needs of the company, clients, or its employees?

Getting to that Next Level

What’s the Next Level?

There are Levels. Realizing that there’s another level to be better is a key component in getting to that level. If you strongly believe that there’s no more level beyond where you currently are, then either you’ve achieved a lot already (Happy for you!) or you are limited in your circumstances, environment, or in your mindset. If you are doing what you can and still not getting the results that you want, then looking for outside help can benefit you. Getting to the Next Level is where the Coaching comes in!

BetterUp has written a helpful article in Benefits of coaching: Purpose, clarity, and passion in daily life

Attitude and Skill

Attitude and Skill were found to be the two key differences between great competitors and good ones in swimming in a study done by Daniel F. Chambliss and shared through his paper “The Mundanity of Excellence: An Ethnographic Report on Stratification and Olympic Swimmers.”

Daniel reviewed the habits, backgrounds, and performance of competitive swimmers and discovered that attitude and skill were the main differentiators between the great swimmers and good swimmers. The great swimmers swim differently (strokes, turns etc) than the good swimmers. The great swimmers have practiced and honed their skill(s) and technique(s) over a period of time. Also the great swimmers came with a different attitude to their swimming training compared to the good swimmers.

How are you approaching your craft everyday and where’s your current skill level at that craft?

Meet to Succeed

Technology, devices, globalization and many other factors have enabled us to work from any part of the world. Being on a virtual meeting with people across multiple locations, time zones, and cultures is more common than ever before. Yet there is something very special about being able to meet your virtual colleagues or team in person (regularly)!

Meeting team members in person enables us to see our individual personalities, have spontaneous conversations, get to know each other, and helps build empathy. It’s harder to build empathy and understanding when you have only interacted virtually with the other person or team. As much as remote work has enabled and empowered those who work remotely, it can have long lasting severe impact to company culture, team bonding, productivity and ultimately the success of the team and the company. To succeed as a company, you need to have an excellent team that challenges and understands each other, can work collaboratively, and keep the bigger picture in mind over their personal goals.

Do you have the option to work remotely at your current company? If so, how often do you meet with your team, leadership, or customers? What are the benefits and challenges you’ve experienced working remotely?

Creative is a choice

In The Practice: Shipping Creative Work, Seth Godin describes that creativity is an Action, Not a feeling.

Taking action on the ideas we have (writing a blog, composing a piece, contributing something new to a conversation or in a meeting etc) is very important. We should not wait for the “right moments” when we feel like doing creative work, we should continue to focus on the action and keep shipping the work. Seth adds that “waiting for a feeling is a luxury we don’t have time for.”

What are you shipping today?

https://youtube.com/watch?v=Riqd9RMuNUg%3Fsi%3Di4W0yZ7DKOpto3Mg

What’s your company culture like?

To get a quick gauge of your current company culture, you can do a few activities.

Have a look at what is being promoted and encouraged within the company.

What pictures, videos or posts are team members posting on internal company channels? Are those pictures of team events, community activities, nature, industry reports or something else? What is the engagement level on those posts?

See what activities team members spend most of their time on besides their day to day work responsibilities.

Are team members actively participating in company events, social events or any event in general? Do the same individuals tend to attend these social events compared to other team members? Are there regular planned company culture activities?

Management’s time and effort in company culture related activities

Does senior leadership understand the benefits of company culture and activities around it? Do they show up or be present in the cultural activities of the company? How is the leadership team treating or behaving towards the volunteers who organize the company culture activities?

Relationship equity

What’s your relationship equity like?

Have you invested time and energy into building the personal and professional relationships in your life?

If there’s not been much investment in the important relationships, should we be surprised by the current status of those relationships?

Relationship equity is about putting in the time, energy, care, generosity, and empathy in building meaningful relationships in our lives. It’s a message, a call, an email, a gift, an acknowledgement or any effort you make to cultivate the relationship in your life. Healthy and beautiful relationships take time and evolve as needed. The more we give and help others, the more joy we receive!

Room for Creativity

Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up. – Pablo Picasso

In one of her “The Artist’s Way” series book, Julia Cameron says that creativity is born in generosity, and flourishes where there is a sense of safety and acceptance. If we feel safe and accepted in a certain environment or group setting, we will generally be comfortable to be ourselves and open up more. If we feel threatened, judged, or unaccepted in a certain environment, we can become defensive and closed.

Julia adds that every creative endeavor thrives in an environment of safety and one of the quickest ways to create this environment is to provide structure. What is ideal is a structured mixture of scheduled and unscheduled time. Scheduled time will help individuals stay focused and get tasks done while unscheduled time will provide them room for spontaneity and inspiration.

let my people go surfing

One of the books that had been on my books bucket list for a while “let my people go surfing” by Yvon Chouinard (Founder and Owner of Patagonia, Inc.) was inspiring and moving.

I had been fascinated with Patagonia’s authentic storytelling and wanted to learn more about the company, culture, and its philosophies. “Let my people go surfing” was initially meant to be a philosophical manual for Patagonia employees and later became a must read book for entrepreneurs, activists, environmentalists and anyone who wants to make our planet better than what it is currently.

I was moved by Yvon’s story of building and running Patagonia, the philosophies that guide Patagonia and its other entities, a company’s role in community activism, our collective responsibilities to our planet, and being a conscious buyer and seller. There are so many gems in this book and I encourage you to read it if you have not already done so. I will be sure to reread this book from time to time!

Book cover image from Penguin Random House.

Supporting the creatives…

There are many ways to support creatives who create and publish their works. There are various forms of art from photography, videography, painting, singing, dancing, drawing, graffiti and many more. Creatives need visibility, appreciation, and respect from their audience which can encourage and help them to continue creating. While what is considered “art” is subjective, we can appreciate the work of the creatives who represent a crucial part of our society.

Creatives use their imagination, tools, skills, time and efforts to create and publish their work in various platforms. A few might have resources to amplify their work but many can surely use our support in whatever form possible!

To sincerely support creatives’ work, we can…

  • Like, Comment or Share on social media
  • Write a message to them to show appreciation
  • Acknowledge their work verbally when meeting in person
  • Write a blog on their story or work
  • Invite them on a podcast or recommend them as guests to a podcast show
  • Donate to their platform
  • Give them a platform to share their work
  • Give them due credit if their work is shared on a medium
  • Buy their work
  • And so much more…

Ideation-Action-Reflection

3 steps to achieving your authentic greatness!

We often get stuck. Get stuck in coming up with an idea, wait for the “perfect” launch strategy, or some internal narrative we tend to hold on to that delays starting out.

Ideas, by themselves are good. However, they also need to be put into action. Ideas need to be shared or acted upon to see if it can move the conversation, connection, or community forward.

When the idea is put into action, we can observe what difference it makes in the conversation, connection, or community. The idea can have a major, minor or no impact in how we have initially thought of in our planning. Reflection is critical to continuously get better and will help in achieving the end result.

Then we repeat : Ideation-Action-Reflection.