Business Anthropology ● ISSUE 13 ● August 2021
Illustration: Ana María González
Business rituals
Issue N°13
Staff
Founders: Giovanna Manrique, Natalia Usme Content Director: Natalia Usme Editor in Chief: Natalia Usme Art Director: Cristi De Matos Ilustrator: Ana María González Columnists: Jesús Contreras Natalia Usme Sara Hernández Translator: Natalia Usme * Follow us on Social Media: Facebook: Flipa Consultora Twitter: @FlipaConsultora Instagram: @FlipaConsultora Youtube: Flipa Antropología de Negocios Web: Flipa Consultora Flípate © Magazine, August 2021. Issue No. 13. All rights reserved. Flípate Magazine is not responsible for the publication or distribution of international editions, unless the edition has been authorized by Flipa’s administrative staff. Do you want to receive the magazine, or send us some comments? Please, email us at contacto@flipaconsultora.com
2 | Flípate
Business Rituals
— Issue 13° —
* All I see is floating heads speaking on Zoom It feels like I’m doom I would like to connect with my team But I fear we all are on a working regime Could a ritual help me to get out of this scene?
*
Founder
|3
Issue N°13
p06
p17
My best friend is a ritual By Natalia Usme
Traveling to the Future with the Flipa Summit By Jesús Contreras
p12
p24
Your Organizational Haka
In the magnifying glass
By Sara Hernández
By Jesús Contreras
4 | Flípate
Business Rituals
Our writers Natalia Usme Co-owner at Flipa Consultora. She is the pioneer of Business Anthropology in Colombia. Natalia has more than 8 years of experience. She focuses on designing present and future strategies for companies. She has a Master of Arts in Applied Cultural Analysis from Lund University in Sweden. She has experience leading international and national projects. Currenlty she works as a service designer within the tech realm. Natalia is the creator of the first Online Summit on Business Anthropology in Latam: The Flipa Summit.
Jesús Contreras Founder of the GOST Project, an initiative that uses photography as an instrument for change. He holds a B.A in Communication, Social and Cultural Anthropology. Jesús has more than 10 years of experience on media. He specializes in print journalism and photography. In 2008 he won the National Journalism Award in Venezuela with mention in Photography. He focuses on visual arts, culture and inclusive education.
Sara Hernández Sara is passionate about social sciences applied to the business world. She loves delving into the intersection between fiction, critical and strategic thinking. She has studies in Modern Languages, Cognitive Processes and Discourse Analysis. She has had the opportunity to work for international organizations in Brazil, Sweden, Colombia, Peru and Ecuador. She has developed initiatives for social responsibility, communication and organizational culture and is also an international speaker.
* |5
My best friend
is a ritual By Natalia Usme
Hahaha my coworker is so funny, I love having a coffee break with her! In fact, I don’t have a coworker with whom I can grab an actual cup of coffee. I’m at home watching a reel on Instagram. There I follow an account called your work bestie. In that space, a woman shares jokes and makes parodies about everyday work situations, such as what happens when a colleague eats in all zoom meetings, the emotions that one feels when a leader requests to have a chat without having it pre-scheduled, or what one looks like when having the camera off. I feel so identified that I have come to feel that indeed this woman who lives in the United States and with whom I have never spoken is my best friend from work. I consume her content twice a
day; in the mid-morning and in the afternoon. As I work in a company that is 100% remote, I only interact with my colleagues in work meetings, that is why I have looked for other types of tools, like this account on Instagram, to feel integrated into an organizational culture. Seeing my best friend from work makes me feel that I am part of a collective, that I can connect with someone beyond operational tasks, and that someone else is also living the same experiences as I am. Hence, this space has become a business ritual for me. What is a ritual?
A ritual is an action that you perform repeatedly and that carries a special meaning for you.
Photo by Michelle Leman from
Pexels
Business Rituals
|7
Issue N°13
For any initiative to take the ritual label, it must:
❢
● Have cadency to generate a sense of tradition within the company ● Have a defined scope, which can be transversal, impact the entire organization, or only certain teams and contexts ● Be embedded in certain rules of behavior about what is allowed or not within this space ● Have a bit of theatricality. Employees must experience a ritualistic space that is emotionally and cognitively different from everyday life. Some magnificence must unfold.
Business rituals are more important than ever in remote companies. They allow employees like they belong to an organizational culture
Why are rituals relevant within an organization?
Rituals work as a cultural glue that allows deeper connections within teams. They generate a sense of belonging and loyalty, which in turn leads to high employee satisfaction. Fostering a people first approach rather than an operational one. It is naive for remote companies to think that they only exist to have a distributed and autonomous workforce that excels at their tasks. Organizations must understand that to call themselves companies, employees must develop an affective bond and rituals serve as mediums to enhance such bonds. Designing Rituals
The first thing is to determine in what type of structure the ritual will be embedded. Is it flat or hierarchical? On the first one, autonomy is the main ingredient. In the second it is completely the opposite, there are very marked roles with authority levels and dependencies. But do not take the word of your own organization, you actually need to observe what happens on a dayto-day basis. In its discourse a company can say 8 | Flípate
it is flat, when in reality dependencies, authority and stoppers are a constant item. Now, let’s say that we are working with a flat organization. The first ritual that we could suggest would be Digital Open Doors. In analogous reality, this type of organization used material culture to evoke this notion, for example with no actual doors, open spaces and having the leaders sit right by your side. In a virtual organizational world, open door rituals must not be as literal as in the physical world. For example, from time to time the company could do an open call for all employees to participate in special projects linked to the organization’s strategy, by participating within them they could really feel like the company takes their input seriously. You can also generate rituals like those of my Instagram friend, how? Organizations can create digital spaces in which collaborators upload videos about special events or memories they want to leave for their colleagues to see. This space for “digital memories” can become a ritual by which the idea of open doors is lived by being able to listen to everyone and integrate teams.
Photo by Cottonbro from Pexels
Business Rituals
|9
Issue N°13
When designing a ritual, bear in mind the essence of the organization so to reinforce the right messages for and with employees
Even stretching the idea of Instagram a little more, it is possible to say that I only meet that friend when I intentionally decide to open the app and search for her account to see new content. Following that idea, organizations could create intentional meetings between colleagues who are not necessarily from the same area using applications. Then we have another scenario, that of informal encounters. Before the pandemic, these were used to create micro languages and mold a sense of reality within teams. To nurture a sense of intimacy in which the masks of work were replaced by a friendlier notion.
Do you want to follow reading?
Unless teams hold very specific events, in the virtual world these types of spaces are lost because there is no cadence. One idea for this is to develop the notion of a virtual bar / cafe for employees.
To design a differential experience, companies could rely on sensory elements. For example, allowing them to create avatars that can move and chat so that the experience is not Buy your annual one-dimensional. You can add digital islands with in activities such link as digital karaokes, card subscription this games, among other elements that allow you to travel to that virtual business bar.
https://payco.link/960125
The important thing is to use the essence of the organization for your ritualistic strategy. Allowing your employees to develop a sense of being, feeling and belonging, preventing them from searching external artefacts such as an Instagram account or even worse another company to feel like they have an organizational culture, because that’s an engagement risk you do not want to have, believe me! I leave you with these thoughts for you to start thinking about the digital rituals you want to create. I know your employees need them.. ❢
10 | Flípate