What Is Culture Design?

April 13, 2021
April 13, 2021 Jamie Notter

As the saying goes, you either have a culture by design or a culture by default. I’ve seen the default cultures—and they’re usually not pretty. They often revolve around the personal style of the CEO (for better or worse), and they are frequently brimming with contradictions, like you say you’re all about collaboration, yet the silos fight fiercely to protect their turfs.

Intentionally designed cultures, on the other hand, are the ones we admire (like Netflix and Zappos). When you design your culture intentionally around what makes you successful, it can be a very powerful flywheel. That’s why our signature consulting project over the last several years has been focused on culture design. We start with our WorkXO culture assessment, but the consulting part is all about what the organization will DO based on the data.

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Curious to see what our culture design process looks like? Great! Because we’re doing a quick show and tell of the process via a webinar on April 23. I’ll go over the key elements of the process like setting up an internal culture team, developing culture priorities, and our “playbook” model for culture change. I’ll also share some examples of the products/outputs that clients have produced as a result of the process.

Sign up here to join us live or get the recording afterwards.

 


 

Jamie Notter

Jamie is a co-founder and culture strategist at PROPEL, where he helps leaders create amazing workplace cultures that drive greater performance and impact. He brings thirty years of experience to his work designing and managing culture, and has specialized along the way in areas like conflict resolution and generations. Jamie is the co-author of four popular business books, including the award-winning Non-Obvious Guide to Employee Engagement, and his fall 2023 release, Culture Change Made Easy. He holds a Master’s in conflict resolution from George Mason and a certificate in Organization Development from Georgetown, where he serves as adjunct faculty.