Harvard Business Review’s recent cover made a shocking claim: culture cannot be created. The author says if you focus on the business, the culture will follow.
I don’t know about you, but I’m annoyed for two reasons:
- HBR has previously published hundreds of articles all about culture, how it important it is, and how to create it. In fact, one article from just last year mentioned that culture must be grassroots and peer-driven, and that employees must take ownership of the culture in order for it to thrive.
- You and I know a focus on the business doesn’t create a great culture in and of itself. In fact, people who bully often claim that’s exactly what they were doing – trying to get results.
So let’s ignore the most recent article, and ask ourselves what kind of culture initiative we can implement that feels grassroots and employee driven.
One hip idea that’s taking center stage is to create a video. All of your employees have smartphones, and most of them are no doubt comfortable taking a picture of themselves and creating videos. So ask your employees to choose one of your company’s core values, and create a 30-second video about how they are living it on a daily basis.
Collect the videos, edit them together in YouTube, and voilà, you’ve got a culture video to share with the world. Put it on YouTube and share it with potential new employees, clients, and more.
If you need inspiration, check out this example from Hard Rock Hotel, San Diego.
If you don’t want to do a video, try doing a PowerPoint version like this one on HubSpot’s website.
And if you’re thinking, “people don’t even know what the values are,” or worse, “people definitely aren’t living the values so we could never pull this off,” then… um… we should talk.
