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Topic 10 - Culture

Culture can feel difficult to define, and even more difficult to sculpt or change. As we talked about in the previous chapter, we have a relationship with our company, and a big part of that relationship is how we connect and resonate with the culture. This week, we will start to dive deeper into what culture is and find useful ways of creating a culture on our team that creates more alignment and makes the challenging job of managing easier.


LEARNING OBJECTIVES

  • Form a useful definition and understanding of what culture is

  • Explore how culture “works,” and consider a new model for how to make culture a useful tool

  • Break culture down into 5 simple ideas that you can discuss with your team and later use on an ongoing basis to help with prioritization, feedback, strategy, and more.

 

Why culture is so necessary

There’s a surprising “inevitability” built into how groups of people function. This deeper-dive may feel a bit academic or complex, but it’s essential knowledge if you want to master culture, become more perceptive to what’s happening in people’s minds, and become more proactive in sculpting a culture that does exactly what we need it to do.,

 

A 5-Layer approach to articulating what we logically believe

Our culture is about what we believe. Beliefs can be examined logically, not just through the lens of inspiring people. A logical set of beliefs is based on the idea that we must believe X for Y to happen. In this way, we can motivate people to grapple with beliefs more directly, causing more rapid adoption, more productive discussion, and greater alignment. And this comes with the most important benefit that this approach to culture can be used constantly in real world situations where we need to reference this logic and these beliefs to get things right.

 

Your Journaling and To-Do List:

  • Journaling Prompts:

    • Beliefs and Habits - Capture some of the more obvious existing beliefs and habits you can see around you. What beliefs and habits are making great outcomes more likely? Which beliefs and habits seem to need improvement, and why?

    • Culture’s Structure - What are your thoughts on the inspirational vs. logical approach to culture? Any questions you want to discuss with the group?

    • People Dynamics - Which of the “inevitable” people dynamics are you seeing?

  • The Five Layers: Next, write a brief draft along with your thoughts for each of these beliefs…

    • Role - Why are other people glad you / your team exists?

    • Value - What forms of Tangible value do you produce for others? What forms of intangible value?

    • Quality - What is your quality window? Why?

    • Decision Intelligence - What is your standard for making decisions as well as your role demands? What available knowledge should your team use? What predictions of potential risks and outcomes should your team consider?

    • Teaming Dynamics - What should we be like to work with? What are the ideal ways for us to interact? What are interactions and style that would be a mistake?

  • Sharing with your team - We’ll discuss this in our session and you can start forming plans for timing and structure in your integration session.