Nudging creative culture through rituals
Fresh from completing IDEO U’s short course on Leading for Creativity, I've been reflecting on the ideas that emerged for designing a culture that is conducive to creativity. I joined the program curious about how the folks at IDEO approach culture design (the content of the course), as well as how the learning experience would proceed (the delivery of the course).
Of the leadership principles advocated through the course, one that really resonated was designing a culture through setting norms. This involves knowing what conditions are needed for the team to thrive, and making adjustments along the way.
Designing rituals is one way to cultivate norms. A ritual is an act or a series of acts that is repeated in the same way each time. We’ve all experienced rituals. Perhaps the singing of a team song before a game, or eating certain food as part of an annual cultural or religious celebration. In the context of organisational culture, a ritual acts as a nudge for the team, addressing gaps or tensions.
“Designing a culture requires knowing what conditions are needed for the team to thrive, and making adjustments along the way. Rituals, through repetition, help create new cultural norms. ”
A common example of a gap is communication in office workplaces – evident even in today’s open plan and co-working spaces.
Picture everyone with their heads down, face to screen, barely looking up to make eye contact. At a workplace like IDEO, this would mean countless missed opportunities for finding and connecting dots in creative work. So a new ritual was introduced to get people talking informally – a weekly tea time.
Now, we see people mingling and smiling, as they enjoy a cup of tea. Chatting about what they are working on. Making suggestions and sparking new ideas. IDEO calls this "casual collisions".
How might this ritual work to affect the team’s culture? If we think about culture simply as what people believe and how they behave, the ritual will act as a trigger for team members to think and do something differently.
Tea time signals it is time to take a break from the screen, it makes it normal for people to mingle and chat. With repetition, team members anticipate the ritual, for the emotional and practical upsides that arise from it: stronger relationships, sense of belonging, and trust, not to mention the new ideas for project work.
This got me thinking about two poignant rituals I have experienced at work. The first was Insights Reflection half days that we held on the last business day of every month. The team exchanged projects, so that someone else looked over the artifacts with fresh eyes for the most poignant insights. These were written up in a structured format and exchanged, leading to collaboration and wider insight sharing. The sessions were a respite from the chaos of day to day, they elevated our work and nurtured our curiosity and our creativity ("How else might we apply this insight...?)
The second was a meeting related ritual. This ritual was so successful, it eliminated virtually all unproductive meetings. How? Before any meeting was held, the convenor stated the Context and the Purpose with a particular structure and language. Everyone invited could determine the relevance for their role, and the meetings proceeded with engagement, clarity and efficiency.
Today we commonly see design hacks being used as a ritual platform, ten minute stand up meetings for issue identification or team member recognition, and I suspect a proliferation of new rituals that involve digital collaboration hubs.
However, with the focused purpose of nurturing creativity in a team, leaders must observe and figure out where the team needs to shift. What are the beliefs and behaviours that need to be addressed?
Observing and sharing with other participants in the IDEO course, it’s clear that there is no lack of gaps to address, and considerable potential for rituals to be embraced as nudges towards a more creative culture. It's also possible that rituals exist today that are counter-productive.
Stepping back and thinking about the effectiveness of current rituals, and what is hindering creativity, could lead to the opportunity to co-create better performing rituals that drive engagement. What are the gaps and tensions today? Maybe it is how project teams are initiated and engaged to contribute ideas on equal footing? How the team accepts and learns from failure?
Ritual design can be applied to these and everything in between, however creative thinking is absolutely needed to design good rituals. I believe that good rituals will be structured, be meaningful, deliver on inclusivity, and ideally, have an element of serious play.
Fortunately we can apply Creative Problem Solving to these challenges, taking inspiration from ritual-rich cultures, universal human themes, and the diversity we experience everyday in the world around us.
Leading for Creativity is an online course that is run on a loop throughout the year. The course is light, digestible and practical, getting across a few key concepts based on the collective expertise of IDEO’s founders and senior practitioners. Engagement levels are high, thanks to first-rate IDEO facilitators and savvy co-learners.