Keeping Culture Alive Or Building A Living Culture

@designthinkers twittered the question: can we keep a culture alive when business, processes, every day reality takes over?

I've been thinking about this a lot lately. What does it take to build a great work culture? In my industry, marketing and advertising, creative culture is at the heart of what makes our products and services stand out to clients. Without a creative culture, we fail. So as my bubie used to say, how can we afford not to buy?

We build customer experiences all the time for our clients, but how much thought goes into building experiences for ourselves? From the first interview to the first day on the job...

Building brands and brand experiences starts with us.

It isn't a matter of money, or about other priorities getting in the way.

It's a matter of choices.

Every day, every moment choices.

For me that changes the question from how you keep a culture alive to instead how you need to build a living culture.

It should be how you think and it needs to become part of your DNA, not your business strategy.

Our workplaces are ecosystem and ensuring the health and sustainability of them, should be one of our first and most important priorities.

ps. slideshare presentation to come in the next two weeks - have had an idea of the ROI of building a creative culture and now i really must get to it.


photo credit: http://psixp.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/creativity.jpg