Enhance your organizational culture with best practices from industry leaders: Decision-making, values, and rituals & traditions
Last week, we discussed best practices for the organizational culture from industry leaders, specifically focusing on feedback, collaboration and learning & development. In this article, we show how some of the biggest companies improve their organizational culture, through decision-making, organizational values, and rituals & traditions.
Netflix: How Netflix involves employees through their decision-making culture
Netflix is well-known in Silicon Valley for their unique way of running the company. Their decision-making culture is admired by many businesses because it empowers employees to make choices on their own, always considering the company's long-term goals. Netflix emphasizes data-driven decisions and ensures employees have all necessary information before deciding. By not focusing solely on quick profits, they allow time for innovation and creativity, which helps create a highly engaged workforce. This approach shows that trust and empowerment in decision-making can lead to lasting success and innovation.
Cisco: A culture of human values in the world of tech
Cisco describes its company culture strategy as a “Conscious Culture,” highlighting the importance of conscious awareness. For Cisco, this means ensuring that both management and employees are self-aware of their environment, and that everyone feels accountable and empowered. All individuals are expected to act in alignment with the culture Cisco aims to create. The "Conscious Culture" is structured around three main values:
- Environment: Cisco fosters a workplace characterized by dignity, respect, fairness, and equity, with a strong focus on diversity and inclusion as foundational elements.
- Characteristics: The culture is shaped by Cisco’s long-established behaviors, beliefs, and principles, which are communicated from the CEO to all levels of the organization. The company is recognized for its genuine commitment to these values.
- Experience: This involves the everyday interactions and experiences employees have with the company, encompassing management, team dynamics, and work tasks.
Upholding these values is a big reason the company has a great employee retention rate, and doubtlessly a major factor in the company’s overall market success.
Adobe: How rituals and traditions help employees feel attached to their employer
Research shows that rituals help people regulate their emotions, get closer to their life and professional goals, and live by their values. At Adobe, rituals are used to make employees feel more connected to the company, their goals, and their values.
Examples of rituals are:
- Crash the Desk: Welcome new hires with a surprise treasure hunt. When the employee is taken away from the desk, teammates fill up their empty new desk with personal objects. Then the employee must go on a hunt, talking to all their new co-workers to try to find the objects’ owners, and hearing stories about why they are special.
- Burn the Argument: a conflict ritual to deal with a fight that might have broken out on your team. The ritual involves team members writing down their feelings about the argument on pieces of paper, then tearing it up, and as a team, bringing it together. It is a small symbolic act, but an explicit way to call out that conflict happened and that the team is deciding to move past it while still recognizing the emotions at stake.
- Creative Cafe: Creative Cafe events are informal gatherings where employees can discuss innovative ideas, collaborate on projects, and share creative work in a relaxed, social setting.
These rituals highlight Adobe's focus on fostering innovation, celebrating achievements, and building a strong sense of community within the company.
