Culture Workshop Worksheet

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Meeting Details & Overview

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Part 1: Discovering Culture

7 questions to help orient your culture around your story

Organizations don't have stories to tell, people do.

In the ever-shifting cultural landscape the consistency of the organization can take center stage at many businesses, corporations, and non-profit organizations. This can become so prevalent that the organization takes on an identity. However, the people in the company are the story that is being told. When the people tell the story, the purpose of the company crystalizes.
Building culture starts by recognizing your story.

Where have you come from and where are the moments you can see clearly that intersect you and your passions?
Do you gather with professionals, young families, or celebrities? What are three things you find that you have to remind yourself?
Not what answers do you have, because those morph with time, experience, and grace. Your questions will attract others that have the same questions.
Discovering Culture continued
What is the thing you are chasing, be specific because language is important?
What is your commodity?
What stands out about your history, the one thing you can never forget?
What are you trying to solve in the lives of people?
Part 2: Crafting Cultural Language — Definition by Negation

Define what your culture is not to bring focus to the positive behaviors we embody

Language creates culture, practices sustain culture

Culture is an unwritten set of rules codified by language that helps us determine how to act and informs us of who we are. Culture gives us a strong sense of identity and defines how we interact amongst ourselves. A well-defined cultural ethos means you can sum up what kind of people you are in a few sentences without using industry buzzwords.

"If we're lucky in our relationships, we also feel nourished, supported, and restored as we look into the face and eyes of the other. Our culture teaches us to focus on personal uniqueness, but at a deeper level we barely exist as individual organisms. Our brains are built to help us function as members of a tribe." — Bessel Van Der Kolk

Definition by negation

Defining a thing can be helpful by seeing what it is not. This can bring great clarity to what kind of people we are and what kind of culture we embody.
Ex. – We are not an anxious people with an anxious work environment. (How are you not anxious? What steps do you take to limit the presence of anxiety?)
Ex. – Our culture is not competition. (In what ways are you not competitive? How do you foster non-competitiveness?)

List 6 things your culture is not. Begin each sentence with “We are not…” or “Our culture is not…”. Capture one statement in each field, and discuss the positive behaviour each statement points toward.
Statement 1 Begin with "We are not…" or "Our culture is not…"
Statement 2 Begin with "We are not…" or "Our culture is not…"
Statement 3 Begin with "We are not…" or "Our culture is not…"
Statement 4 Begin with "We are not…" or "Our culture is not…"
Statement 5 Begin with "We are not…" or "Our culture is not…"
Statement 6 Begin with "We are not…" or "Our culture is not…"
Part 3: Identify Potential Cultural Values

Reflect on the Discovering Culture worksheet. List out 5 potential cultural values using 1–2 words for each value.

For each of the 5 values, enter a value name in 1–2 words, followed by 1–2 sentences describing the cultural value and what it looks like in practice.
Value 1 1–2 words
Value 2 1–2 words
Value 3 1–2 words
Value 4 1–2 words
Value 5 1–2 words