Do you have a creative culture in your organisation?

Now that the start of the year is under your belt are you really dealing with the cultural aspects of your business that you resolved to address at the end of last year?

If the answer is ‘no’ then there is no time like the present to re-engage your team in a review of the cultural DNA that makes your business, people and importantly customers’ tick. Get this right now and the momentum will carry you all through the rest of the year and beyond.

Cultural ownership has to run through every individual in your organisation so get them involved in thinking creatively about a company culture that empowers, excites, motivates and drives them towards achieving their goals. Don’t forget your customers either – crowd source their opinions so that they feel totally involved and engaged with your brand and your people.

Here are a few ideas for you to throw into the discussion pot for creative ways of reinvigorating your company culture in 2014.

• Embrace working remotely

The office environment is invariably not where your teams or you do your best work, or certainly your best thinking. Whilst great for building camaraderie, maintaining ease of communications, and a safety check for the team ‘putting in the hours’ – it is often distracting, stifling to creative thinking and at worse a policing exercise that does nothing to empower your people.  Embrace remote working as undoubtedly the productivity will improve, and encourage each individual to share the creative ideas they’ve had whilst in a different location.

• Ditch long meetings and rotate ‘the chair’

There is nothing worse to gearing yourself up for a positive week than a glance at your diary at the number of predictable meetings that make up your day to day, that are run in the same way, and chaired by the same person. As a company grows you will see more and more meetings appearing and less and less time to do the work around them. As a result people will work out-of-hours, cut their thinking time, and add to the endless numbers of emails in a bid to keep on top of their work.

Shake it up a bit by changing the format of essential meetings by rotating the chair across the attendees. It will develop the individual, ensure that people come prepared and at least give a little variety to the norm. Better still review your meetings and try something creative. Introduce a ‘daily stand up’ where everyone across the business participates, remotely connecting as required. You have a maximum of 30 minutes (depending upon the size of business) to get the critical daily items covered off then you’re free to go and deliver it. Better still try ‘no email Friday’. That doesn’t mean you save them up until Monday! Instead pick up the phone, arrange a conference call or Skype a group for a ‘face to face’ engagement and cut down on the Inbox.

• ‘Thirst for knowledge Thursday’

Everyone needs a time out. Make it formal by setting aside ½ hour on a Thursday afternoon for people to down tools and have an afternoon cuppa together to share knowledge, speed meet, and catch up with people that they wouldn’t normally interact with. You’ll be amazed what they learn and how stimulating it is for all concerned. Again there is no excuse not to do this remotely for a ‘virtual’ interaction.

• Buying and selling holidays

We all have times where we either need a couple more days off to accommodate ‘our lives’ or where work commitments just don’t allow us to take all the holiday entitlement. Let individuals work out how best to manage this amongst themselves by facilitating a ‘buy and sell holiday option’ that gives them the ownership to get the jobs done but to agree how best they can manage the commitments they have.

• Customer ‘meet and greet’ days

What better way to engage with your customers than to diarise ‘meet and greet’ sessions with them? This can take any form you like from inviting them to meet you at your place of work and join you for a coffee, inviting them to your store for a pre-opening breakfast brainstorm, joining you in your business at the close of the day for a light bite, or inviting them to a ‘chat room’ or Skype session.  Use this time to capture their comments about what you’re doing, show them new product ideas, share new service initiatives, and introduce ‘the team’. 

•  ‘Happy Friday’ 

A fantastic way to share the positive feedback from your customers each week and to end the week on a high is to publish a ‘Happy Friday’ report that gives snippets of customer reviews, feedback and employee success stories. It’s a great way to give you a pat on the back for a good job done!

• Finally… don’t forget spontaneous feedback

Creative cultures thrive on timely and relevant feedback. Whether it’s good or bad, feedback helps teams raise their own expectations. It’s the fuel you need to ignite a creative culture. And who doesn’t want one of those?

 Get in touch or click culture to find out how we can help you to get creative about your company culture.