6 Atmospheric Elements for Transforming Your Company Culture

The transformation process I work with is a holistic, systemic model, where the characteristics of the system (organization, team, or individual) cannot only be determined by the properties of its parts. The structure and relationships of the parts determine how the system expresses itself, and sometimes small, leveraged changes can make large impacts on the dynamics and results. Here are a few modalities practitioners experiment with that can support the transformational process.

Nutrition

Food is key.

• Individual diet change to support the transformation

• Whole, organic foods served in the workplace and at meetings, conferences, and change initiative events

• Water—pure water not in plastic bottles

Meeting and workplace setup and geography

• Innovative and exciting structures to facilitate convening and conversations

Music

Music can be a powerful context-setter, creating a soundtrack for your work. Warning: beware of imposing music on people. Get their input, suggestions, and contributions.

• Break music—Your soundscape sets the tone

• Background music, hold music; be careful of what goes on in the elevators.

• A live band— side stage like late-night talk shows: can include covers, customized lyrics, customized songs, video scoring, walk-in & walk-out music, play on, and interaction with the presenters.

Quiet time; free time

• In the hundreds (thousands?) of meetings I've been a part of, there seems to be a mindset that "we need to jam pack our agenda to give these people as much as possible while we have them all together.” I've seen agendas that go from 7:30 am to 10:30 at night with merely the standard 15-20 minute breaks, lunch, and dinner, etc., even "working lunches." This is not an optimal learning environment. People need time to digest.

Exercise/activity

• In sit-in-front-of-a-computer-most-of-the-day environments, how can people integrate body movement into their work and interactions?

• Personal exercise and movement

• Activities for groups to be in their bodies when working together

Meditation

• Meditation as a personal practice for transformation

• Meditation in an organizational culture

Integrating some of these practices into a meeting and your workplace can facilitate new ways of interacting, innovating, and being together that can help shift the culture and integrate deeper contributions from the people involved. A lot of cutting edge companies are doing it. What can you put into practice in yours?