Throughout my corporate experience, the organization underwent numerous changes. I remember hearing a voicemail that our CEO had left, there were times that one of our senior leaders left our regional office, or we just had some sort of situation or event happen that changed the dynamics, or the feel or the flow.
I know you have experienced that, if you’re not going through it literally right now – there are changes happening around us all the time. And one of the things that started to creep top of mind for me was, what’s the culture going to be within our company, within our organization? And I found that it wasn’t so much about the culture within the broader organization that I really cared about or that my peers or my direct reports cared about, it was more about what’s the culture within what we experience on a day-to-day?
And for us at that time, it was our day-to-day within our team and within our regional office. Now for you, what does that culture mean? Is it within you and a small cohort? Is it the culture that you want to experience within a team? Or if you go into an office, that feeling within the office environment? Or are you on-site in corporate, and maybe it feels really big, but what does culture mean to you?
I was not in the C suite; I was not the person who, from the top down, was going to instill or create or mandate, “This is our culture. Here’s our new vision and mission, and here are the values.” That’s not what this was about. It was about, how do I take from the position that I’m currently in, regardless if I was in a formal leadership position. How do I go from where I’m at to help create that culture – specifically in this case, a culture of community. The culture of community is really not driven from the top down. It is driven from within individuals across the organization.
So, I didn’t need a title in order to create that culture of community – I just needed to create the intent.
What was the intent behind it? So if you are thinking about, how do I change some of the dynamics, I wish things were different – stop sitting around and waiting for somebody else to create that culture. Especially if it’s a culture of community; you don’t need to wait for the top down. You don’t need to wait for somebody with an official title. YOU are within the community. It’s the community that creates that culture.
So go in with intent. Now for me, what did that look like? That looked like in-person, grabbing a colleague and going to lunch, grabbing one of my direct reports and saying, “Hey, let’s have our one-on-one across the street at the coffee shop.” For me, among my peers, most of my peers were not physically in my same office. They were in other offices or if you are in a remote situation. So I said, what can we do virtually? We held virtual coffees every month.
I kicked that off. I just said, “Hey, I want to learn from each of you. Can we just have a virtual coffee once a month?” And I just helped originate it and facilitate it; I didn’t have to own all of it. But again, stop waiting for top down or somebody else to come in and build some culture that you’re hoping will exist within your organization or your team.
The culture of community starts from within, and it starts with intent by you. So I encourage you, I challenge you today, what can you do to start to create the culture that you are most interested in creating? What does that look like for you from where you’re at today? And who can you bring along with you? What support, who else is like-minded and will go along with you to help build this culture that’ll be of benefit to beyond just you and that tight-knit group? Go build that culture today.