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Somnath Sandeep

What are those small things which make a big difference to a workplace culture?

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We talk about team/organization culture all the time, but what really is culture? What does it mean to you? Maybe give an example of an incident where you felt like "this is what it (culture) really is".

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Stuti Agarwal
Open door policies. To have approachable colleagues and bosses is perhaps what has made the most difference personally. I had the pleasure of working under someone who I actually went to to teach me the use of commas (without any appointments). And to this day, it is something I cherish.
Somnath Sandeep
@stuti That's so nice. Will take this as a reminder to be more approachable, and ready to help with our team, and organization. Reminds me of this quote by Ben Horowitz: "Take care of the people, the products and the prices - in that order"
Fatoumata from We Ynspire
Organizing things for coworkers to reinforce the team's feeling of belonging somewhere (not really possible currently unfortunately)
Somnath Sandeep
@weynspire by that, do you mean offline events specifically?
Somnath Sandeep
@weynspire Talking of which, I think you'd like to check out this book titled "Leading from Anywhere" by David Burkus (https://g.co/kgs/Dcmx9H). He gives practical advices on how to develop "shared understanding", "shared purpose", and "shared identity" while working remotely.
Fatoumata from We Ynspire
@somnathsandeep Thanks for this advice, I will check it out!
Mayank Gupta
Being really connected to each and every member, easy to approach colleagues. Having an open mind and trying to understand everyone. Basically good culture in an organization would make you feel like a part of it, rather than feeling like an employee. You tend to put in more effort and ideas for an organization with a good culture.
Somnath Sandeep
@mayank_gupta11 That's so true. Having approachable colleagues is fundamental to any bottom-up change in an organization. This is how intrapreneurs are formed (someone who successfully adapts entrepreneurial attitudes and strategies inside an organization). This can only happen when people are able to work together, and are given enough freedom and resources to take risks, and make new mistakes. When this happens, startups emerge inside a startup. It becomes extremely dynamic and disruptive, and there's no stopping after this.
Shiva Prabhakaran
Set a limit on the number of meetings and the time spent on each meeting.
Somnath Sandeep
@killshiva That's so true. While meetings are the medium of managerial work, it can be a real distractor from getting focused work done for makers. I try to keep these 4 points in place for meetings (apart from the impromptu ones): Before the meeting: 1) Agenda 2) Time box During and after the meeting: 3) Action items 4) Minutes of meeting (MoM) Is there a sweet number you've identified for the number of meetings per day? @killshiva
RASHI JAIN
Learning from each other without any hierarchy. Leaning has no boundaries, classifications and types. One can learn by someone's behavior, working style and even merely just the way they are. This is really not possible when we are working remotely as one is connected virtually but otherwise it definitely contributes to your overall growth.
Somnath Sandeep
@thunderbird27 that's true, hierarchy can be a blocker for information flow in an organization, and innovativeness. Innovation can happen both bottom-up and top-down, and it's essential that there's no hierarchy in terms of command, and control.