Freestyling. The Art Of Bootstrapping Culture.

 

I have wrecked my brain on how to create project cultures. Cultures are the rules how things are done within a group. Rituals, rules of engagements, language and visual clues that identify this specific group.

A culture can be awesome. It can that turn a collection of individuals into a tight and focused group. A group with a purpose. A group that feels special and a little different from the rest of the organization.

But how do you "create" a culture?

“Creating” a culture can be creepy. Having to be committed to the corporate manifesto, having a shared enemy, awkward rituals.

A fun guy for a fun group yelling that we should have fun and be fun to be with because this is a fun company. A guy with the smile of The Joker in Batman. Creepy.

The thing with cultures is that they emerge. They happen. If a group of people spents enough time together, they get a shared history, anecdotes, shared phrases. A culture.


It takes time to evolve. And that is time you don’t have in projects. Projects are very temporary and you almost have to get instant productivity.

Throw people together. And. Bam! You need culture. Now!

Culture is an expression of a shared identity. Everybody has an identity. If you want to have a “shared” one, you just have to let people reveal their identity and determine what is in common.

So. You are not creating one. You are in essence revealing one.

Bootstrapping! That is revealing a culture.

But again. How does this work?

For this, we need a proper definition of culture.

The observable traits or characteristics of an organism are called “phenotypes”. Your entire digital footprint is a phenotype. And so is the parrot on your shoulder if you associated yourself with being a pirate.

Boyd and Richerson in Culture and the Evolutionary Process (1985) define culture as “information capable of affecting individuals’ phenotypes which they acquire from other conspecifics … by teaching or imitation.”

So. Teaching and Imitation.

So. One person starts a thing and when enough people start copying it, start doing it, it becomes part of the culture.

This is a very famous movie clip about one guy that starts doing a funny dance. After a while somebody joins him. And after a couple of minutes he has a very large group following his behavior.

That's how it works.

Sing multiple stupid songs and see if one catches on.

Use several metaphors while bootstrapping your project. If you talk about your project in the context of The Wizard of Oz, some common phrases might stick among your team members. They might keep calling you Dorothy. Or refer to The Plan as The Yellow Brick Road.

The thing is: you can’t force it.

You throw stuff to the wall and see what sticks. If it catches on, awesome. If it doesn't, forget about it.

This is not really management.

It isn't pure leadership also.

I propose we call it Freestyling.

Freestyling is the Art of Bootstrapping.

Rock on!
 
 

Bas de Baar is a writer who draws about people in transition. He loves to make visual maps and travel guides for the collaborators of our brave new world.