“Culture hacks” can improve company culture

Your team’s best work can be directly related to company culture. Changes in culture, such as a tweak to a process or a shift in where people share ideas, can reignite a team’s collaborative spirit and get creative juices flowing.

ITDMs can directly and positively affect culture with the tools and tech they choose as well as the processes they implement. It’s important to stretch those change-maker muscles when you feel like it would benefit your team. A small change can go a long way.

Even the smallest “culture hack” can incite lasting positive change. According to Gartner, “A culture hack is a small change that exploits a single area where your culture is vulnerable to change. Hacks are small, emotional, immediate changes that have big impacts.”

Your first step is to think critically about the way teams are working. Evaluate the way people are collaborating and sharing ideas, and locate roadblocks that hinder creativity. If you find any, introduce a culture hack that can appropriately address the issue. “Design the hack to be self-sustaining.

That is, create a hack that naturally reinforces the behaviors you seek, without your intervention. Designing sustainable hacks avoids both one-offs that don't achieve lasting change, and backsliding to old behaviors. The introduction of a new rule is a great way to create a self-sustaining hack.

For example, you could introduce a rule that no new idea can be pitched using PowerPoint or Word.” This hack is self-sustaining because it’s a rule that’s automatically triggered in a particular circumstance, that of pitching a new idea.

Due to this rule, the person with the idea is forced to go beyond default tools and get creative in conveying the idea,” according to Gartner.

Hacking your company’s culture can be a great way to get teams collaborating more creatively. Download Gartner’s full report The Art of Culture Hacking to learn more about how company culture relates to workflow and see a list of culture hacks you can try with your team.

Source: Gartner The Art of Culture Hacking, Mary Mesaglio, 29 January, 2018 Gartner does not endorse any vendor, product or service depicted in its research publications, and does not advise technology users to select only those vendors with the highest ratings or other designation. Gartner research publications consist of the opinions of Gartner's research organization and should not be construed as statements of fact. Gartner disclaims all warranties, expressed or implied, with respect to this research, including any warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.