Filling Up Your Tent With Culture. Cleaning Up The Camping Site.

 

Let's say wearing party hats and chanting "Kumbaya" is a big deal in your group culture.

It took you an entire workshop to get your group to pick these cultural elements up. During your latest bootstrapping session, what is called a Gathering, they picked the hats and the song instead of wearing a dead fish as a tie.

Nice try though. With the fish.

So. You bootstrapped a culture for a temporary social system. That's an expensive word for a group that doesn't last forever.

How do you hold this new sweet tiny culture together and move it into the host organization?

Of course I will address this question metaphorically :)

First what we need is a tent. A tent is the fantastic metaphor for the temporary structure.

As I mentioned in the famous Shabba! post:

"Think about it as a hospital tent set up in a field. It allows the doctors to perform surgery isolated from what happens around them. It provides focus and shelter. It’s not a fortress. The walls are thin and allow for surrounding noises to enter. It’s put up when needed and taken away when it has served its purpose."

A tent is what we need to hold our culture. Or, if you like, we fill the tent with our culture like a hot air balloon.

A tent would allow us to walk around with our party hats without people making fun of us. Did I say Party Tent? It provides a comfort zone that allows your group members to express themselves freely within the group.

The thin walls of the Party Tent allow the sound of "Kumbaya" to be heard outside the tent. To inform people you are still alive in there. To get peoples interest. Or to absolutely scare them away.

This is Border Control. Remember? Creating boundaries for yourself and the group.

You can discuss with your group how the ideal tent would look like. What kind of material? What information can get out, or what information should stay in the tent? What would you pack? How do you make sure you can get along on a small confined space for a period of time?

Suppose you have your tent ready. Party Tent. Party Hats. Guitars rocking'. You enter the host organization to put up your tent. Or. You want to embed the temporary social system into the larger more static social system.

How do you secure your tent?

When running projects with cultures different from the host organization, you have to think about the shock wave that precedes the project and the footprint it leaves behind.

The success of securing your tent is in the preparation of the land, and making sure you leave the ground clean.

Shock waves

An example: If your project requires a high level of transparency, but the host organization is all dark and secret, you have to prepare.

Before the start, the first shock waves of transparency must have hit the organization. Before the project, create sunlight, put all the dark (non-transparent) parts in the spotlight. Before doing the project, make performance information shared and accessible for everyone. Give it some time, let the dust settle so you can see where the hardcore problems occur.

Or in our case. Send one camper in advance that is providing every one with a complementary hat. If some people refuse your hat, pay attention to the reasons why.

Footprint

For example, when a project with a deviant culture is finished, project team members become just employees again. Employees of the main culture they challenged for a short period. If the project provided benefits and value for their direct colleagues the deviance will be regarded as useful. If the project leaves the acceptance of transparency and the tools to create it behind, you have left a legacy that people will remember.

So.

Fill up your tent.
Preparing the camping site.
Clean up after you leave.

Oh. Yeah. I hate camping. The real thing I mean.

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.