When studying different cultures around the world you find they all are built around the same structure of three elements. In the core you have “values”, then you have the “rituals” and in the outer circle you have “symbols”. The values represent the common believes – the why in your culture, the reason for being – the rituals are the way you do things, the way you behave, work and interact with your surroundings and last the symbols – the branding, the colors, the text and the visual signature.
Throughout history strong cultures have been built this way. In the core, often a strong belief in a god or mythical stories retold through centuries. Then we develop special rituals to praise the gods, make sacrifice, celebrate victories or try to influence the future. Then we design strong signs and pictures depicting our beliefs and our rituals. We build large unique structures, filled with symbols as beacons of our culture for all to see. And last we brand ourselves with tattoos, colors and signs, sounds and patterns. This way we show the world we belong to a special culture.
And in exactly the same way we run our business cultures today. We create core values or mission statements that become guidelines for everything we do. Then we develop rituals in forms of leadership programs, customer care programs or sales behavior. We gather in large arenas and celebrate, sing our special songs, praise our values and our leaders – we form stronger bonds to each other and our culture.
And off course we brand everything from our office building, cars, stores, billboards, screens – all the way down to the business card in your pocket.
The values are the abstract elements you keep in your heart and mind. The rituals are the active elements you perform. And the symbols are the elements you can see, touch and feel.
When building a strong culture you often seek help from other companies. You contact design- and advertising agencies to develop your branding. You contact large consulting firms to help develop your values and mission statements – but who do you call for the “rituals” part? Who specializes in making the rituals work? Who customize and design the experience part of your culture? – well we do!
Over the last 25 years we have worked with a wide variety of companies with the riutals part of the business culture. The part for action and interaction. The part where your employees actually perform the brand. We have developed a simple strategic model we call “the enthusiasm model”. Although it is quite complex in the back end, we made the model easy and simple to understand. We believe that in order to make a business culture thrive and grow you need culture-fuel. We call this fuel enthusiasm – and in order to get an enthusiastic employee you need three main components. Knowledge, Ownership and Motivation.
Knowledge is the information part in your culture, who owns the information, the sharing structure, the information flow and the constant level of competence.
Ownership is your employees perceived ability to influence their work and work process. And at last “whats in it for me”? What motivates me to give 120% every day?
We have developed analytical tools to measure the level of enthusiasm in your culture. When we have the numbers we start the interesting work of designing and developing customized rituals that work for your unique culture. We create a long term frequency plan – because a strong business culture…is perishable and needs constant nurturing. All the way we measure the results to ensure maximum return on investment.
We call this process the Art Of Business Culture.