Imagination, Creativity and Culture

I'm thrilled to be included in the 100 Top Creatives issue of Origin magazine (and wearing my Treasure of the Sirens necklace!)

Speaking of "conscious culture," next week is a big one for Science House. I'm spending the day prepping, and I have a feeling that years from now, when I look back on my career, next week may stand out as one of those pivotal times that changed my life. The focus of the project is making an organization's culture visible so it can be transformed on all levels.

Just this morning I saw an interview with Apple CEO Tim Cook about firing employees who aren't a cultural fit. A cautionary note for others who might consider this: you really need to understand your organization's culture inside and out, and constantly measure it against your goals and desired future state.

For example, leaders who don't understand their own culture but fire people who don't fit might fire employees for daring to be candid in a staff meeting because their company culture is built on consensus.

The key question: what do you want your culture to be, and what are you and your organization doing every day to consistently make it more and more real? It takes a lot of imagination to see the future state, and a lot of perseverance to live your way into it.

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Rita J King is the EVP for Business Development at Science House, a cathedral of the imagination in Manhattan focused on the art and science of doing business. She is a strategist who specializes in the development of collaborative culture by making organizational culture visible so it can be measured and transformed. She is a senior advisor to The Culture Institute in Zurich, Switzerland, and a Fellow at the Salzburg Global Forum. She makes Mystery Jars, is the creator of Treasure of the Sirens, writes about the future for Fast Company and invents story architecture, characters and novel technologies for film and TV as a futurist for the Science and Entertainment Exchange. Follow@RitaJKing on Twitter.