Learn How to Visualize Culture: David vs. Goliath Edition

Are you sometimes baffled by what you see around you at work? Do things take forever as people jump through hoops for approval? Or does everything move so quickly that you wonder who is in charge of figuring out the potential consequences for taking big risks? Do meetings last forever, and include everyone so you can achieve perfect consensus, no matter how long it takes? 

Culture can either be intentionally designed, or it emerges by default. Culture is the collection of daily behaviors that make up the way an organization thinks, operates,  seizes (or misses) opportunities and meets (or fails to meet) challenges. But culture is nebulous and hard to see, much less manage and transform. 

Imagine if you could see your team or organization's culture.

For the past couple of years, Science House has used the Culture Map system to work with global companies to visualize the cultures of leadership teams and entire organizations. Culture Map is a color-coded system. All teams and organizations have all seven colors in different proportions, resulting in a unique cultural fingerprint. We've learned so much and had such a good time that we decided to host a series of Culture Salons at Science House for participants to come and map out imaginary organizations to compare how radically different a map results from different mindsets. 

For those of you who are in NYC and curious about culture, our first salon will be held on Friday, May 29 at 3 pm sharp. Participants will be placed on one of the two teams. The theme will be David vs. Goliath. One team will map the culture of an imaginary new startup, and the other will map the culture of an imaginary multinational. Seating is limited, so if you want to participate, please let us know ASAP. You can come alone or with a colleague to learn the fundaments of how to understand company culture. You must reserve a seat in advance to participate. If you can't make this one but want to be invited in the future, please let us know. 

Science House is a seven-story cathedral of the imagination in Manhattan, where teams come to create the future together. The garden is in full bloom, so after the workshop, please stay for snacks and drink in the iconic view.  

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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 is a Weizmann Advocate for Curiosity. She makesMystery 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.