The Power of Designing a Positive Culture

22 Feb 2024 · 1 min

Watch on YouTube

1:00

In this brief exchange, Speaker A emphasizes that neglecting intentional culture design leads to an unwanted default culture, which can foster negativity and conflict. Marc Haine shares a practical intervention he introduced—the Virtues Project—where team members draw virtue cards, reflect on personal development, and publicly recognize colleagues embodying those virtues during stand‑up meetings. This exercise shifts interpersonal dynamics, creating an emotionally safe, supportive environment that fosters loyalty, even if such conversations are rare outside work. The dialogue underscores that purposeful culture work, using concrete tools like the Virtues Project, can transform workplace relationships and prevent toxic defaults.

You'll pay a price for not focusing on culture because then there's always going to be a culture. The best are by design, right? But some are just by default. And you're not going to like the culture you have if you don't design it. And so, that's when people start talking badly about each other, when you start to have callouts and that kind of thing. And so, you really want to make sure that it's a priority.
Love it! One of the best exercises that I adopted later on in my career with organizations is virtues pick. There's a thing called Virtues Project and you get virtue cards. And we would pick a virtue out of the deck and then, we would recognize where we needed to work on it. Then, we'd acknowledge other people who have got that virtue. And during a stand-up, that was like a major shift in how people related to one another. It was absolutely brilliant.
They're probably not having conversations like that anywhere else in their lives, which makes your workplace The only emotionally safe place, the only place that is a little bit touchy-feely, but that's what creates loyalty.