Those Events Coming Up

Hey there, I hope you’re having a good Friday as we wrap up the week here. Before we shift gears and get into that weekend mode I wanted to drop a new Culture Junky LinkedIn Exclusive for you to hopefully get those gears turning when t comes to your organizational culture.

Earlier this week I looked at the calendar and noticed that with August coming up, many organizations and teams would be doing outings to celebrate the end of summer. This might be a sort of weekend conference or seminar somewhere with your team, maybe with spouses or even with everyone’s kids too, or maybe it’s just an evening out with everyone to enjoy the nice weather and forget about work for awhile.

Because of that, I have to drive home a point that’s incredibly important regarding those weekend conferences, fun outings, and anything that falls under the ‘culture event’ category on your calendar.

Just because you as a leader put together a great evening, weekend or even maybe week, for your team members, doesn’t mean you get to take your foot off the gas.

It’s easy to look at a successful outing or weekend getaway and think to yourself that things are going great in your culture. I see it all the time, usually in organizations that have a big wooden engraved sign in their lobby with some sort of a quote about how their culture is like a family, trust me it’s a huge red flag.

Those ‘culture events’ on the calendar, that you probably have coming up, they should serve as opportunities for the bonds among your team members to become deeper so that in a very natural way these people become friends.?

There’s a quote I read recently that goes something like this:

“A team aligned behind a vision will move mountains. Sell them on your roadmap and don’t compromise - care about the details, the fit, and finish”

If the folks in your organization are aligned behind your vision - the one you painted vividly with your origin story - then these culture events should be enhancers that allow them to see themselves as friends who are aligned behind that vision, not just coworkers.?

The culture events on your calendar should be things that the folks in your organization look forward to as opportunities to spend time with their friends outside of work.

They’re the ‘enhancers’ on what is already a well organized strategic and intentional culture - those events by themselves aren’t your culture.?

So if you have those events on the calendar, don’t use them as excuses to let the other areas of your culture slip. Don’t think that just because you picked up the tab on your team’s Friday night outing that you can get by without delivering on your intended experience.

Give that some thought and have a great weekend ahead.