Culture: Rituals & Ceremonies
You’re right, this thread on culture is pretty straight forward and hardly rocket science, but I’m hoping it will make the occasional person stop and consider certain things. Like how they may inadvertently offend; or how they can market more effectively on a personal level. All things being equal in life you can rest assured all things will never be entirely equal unless it’s an artificial construction…
Rituals are those things we do like shake hands a certain way, or check the tires on the car before we go for a drive. Sometimes they’re contrived, and often they’re not. The way your business operates – talks, walks, answers the phone, makes coffee at 10am – consists of rituals. Your private life is just as full of them, too. Rituals are a binding glue, like the rest of culture, that generates a cohesive presence. And this is exactly what you want and need because a strong culture creates a strong business with a high chance of success.
Ceremonies, on the other hand, are contrived public events like handing over certification; or acknowledgment of Dick & Jane pulling that major account. You can quickly grasp the importance of using even minor ceremonies to reward and punish, to acknowledge product releases, and reinforce good behaviours.
With artifacts like physical structure and symbols, language, rituals and ceremonies we see a large amount of the cultural environment popping through the bland cracks of what we were seeing as organisational and social homogeneity. Understanding these, and recognising how they drive behaviour, are fundamental skills worth fostering and sharing. OK this sounds a bit like an academic rant, but I hope you bear with me. Tomorrow I’ll toss in a few lines about stories and legends.
