Building a strong culture. One post at a time.

The other day I was working on a piece about how to reward employees and build culture, and I thought back to one of my favorite cultural artifacts from jobs past.

I worked at a small agency in the late 2000s. As was standard, we had a website, with a blog. As was less standard, our blog wasn’t just a place for the president to talk to the masses. Rather every person in our company contributed to the blog. We had about 30 employees at the time, so each of us was responsible for one post per month. The posts didn’t have to be anything earth shattering, deeply intellectual or even directly relevant to digital advertising. We (the leadership team) asked that people write about things they found interesting and contributed to how they thought about their job/work/the industry...

The results were magical. Not just in the posts themselves, which showcased the range and diversity of the very talented team, but in how it brought the company together. We all eagerly awaited each post to see that day’s peek inside one of our coworkers's minds (and hearts). We saw facets of people that were completely hidden in daily work life. Who knew that the quiet developer was a master storyteller and aspiring filmmaker. Or that surviving a nine hour, ten mile commute in a blizzard could turn into a hysterical story. For a team of people who were working their collective asses off, the blog provided a place to share and laugh and bond for a few minutes a day.

Everyone owned the blog, and was able to be themselves there. Each post added to the collective sense of who we were as a company. It allowed our clients and prospective clients to get to know us as people with rich and varied experiences. It reminded us that we were people with stories, not just employees with task lists and helped create a strong sense of belonging to a special team.

Sadly, like many pieces of digital ephemera, the blog is no longer live. But it was an important part of our team during a period of frenetic growth and change.

Thanks blog. I miss you.