Collaborative Culture Building

Most D2C founders I coach have this one problem: 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗶𝗿 𝘁𝗲𝗮𝗺 𝗶𝘀 𝗯𝘂𝘀𝘆, 𝗯𝘂𝘁 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝘁𝗿𝘂𝗹𝘆 𝗮𝗹𝗶𝗴𝗻𝗲𝗱. Culture doesn’t break because of strategy, it breaks because of disconnection. Teams slip into silos, communication becomes transactional, and soon, collaboration feels forced. But here’s the fix. And it takes just 15 minutes a week. 𝗜 𝗰𝗮𝗹𝗹 𝗶𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 “𝗖𝘂𝗹𝘁𝘂𝗿𝗲 𝗥𝗲𝘀𝗲𝘁 𝗥𝗶𝘁𝘂𝗮𝗹.” Every Friday, before wrapping up, gather your team (offline or online) and run a quick 3-part check-in: 1. One win – Each person shares their biggest highlight of the week. 2. One stuck point – A challenge where they’d love support. 3. One gratitude – A person they appreciate in the team and why. That’s it. 15 minutes. No slides, no reports, no overthinking. Why does this work? It reinforces shared wins, so your team celebrates together, not in silos. It normalizes vulnerability, making it easier to ask for help. It builds recognition into the culture, instead of waiting for appraisal cycles. I’ve seen founders adopt this and witness the shift within a month- more trust, better collaboration, and a culture where people actually want to show up. Remember: strategy scales your business, but rituals shape your culture. And this one is worth every minute. #scalingbusiness #gratitude #teamwork #teamrituals

Building a Trust-Driven Culture: Fresh Ideas to Ignite Change! 🚀 Trust isn’t just a value—it’s the heartbeat of any thriving organization. If you’re looking to foster a culture rooted in trust, here are some creative ideas to get started: 1️⃣ Radical Transparency Tuesdays: Dedicate one day a week to open Q&A sessions where team members can ask anything—no filters, no judgment. 🎤 2️⃣ Failure Celebration Rituals: Normalize mistakes by celebrating lessons learned. Host a monthly “Failure Fest” to share stories, laugh, and grow together. 🎉💡 3️⃣ Cross-Team Shadowing: Encourage empathy by having employees spend a day shadowing a teammate from a different department. Seeing the challenges others face builds mutual respect. 🤝 4️⃣ Trust Tokens: Gamify trust! Employees can “gift” tokens to colleagues who demonstrate honesty, collaboration, or accountability. Redeem tokens for rewards or public recognition. 🪙🌟 5️⃣ Anonymous Feedback Fridays: Create a safe space for employees to voice concerns or share praise. Actively address the feedback to show you’re listening. 🗣️📩 6️⃣ Leaders in the Spotlight: Let leaders get vulnerable by sharing personal stories about challenges, failures, and lessons. Authenticity breeds trust. 🌟 7️⃣ Celebrate the Quiet Contributors: Build trust by recognizing unsung heroes whose work often goes unnoticed. This reinforces a culture where everyone matters. 🎖️ 8️⃣ Trust Retreats: Organize team retreats focused on trust-building activities like outdoor challenges, problem-solving exercises, or simply breaking bread together. 🏞️🍴 A trust-driven culture isn’t built overnight—it’s the small, intentional actions that truly matter. What strategies have worked for you? Let’s share ideas and elevate workplace trust together! 🌟✨ #Leadership #CultureBuilding #TrustMatters #Innovation

Culture isn't collaborative just because you have meetings. Collaboration isn't consensus. It's respectful conflict. At Fannie Mae (back in the day), we thought we were collaborative because everyone was nice in meetings. But the reality? It wasn't. Here's what would happen: • Someone (often me) would propose an idea in a meeting • Everyone would nod along politely • Meeting would end with apparent agreement • Then the sabotage would begin in the hallways... If I could see the air bubbles above people's heads as they left my office, they'd read: "There's no way I'm supporting this idea. This is the worst idea in the world. Henry Cason is crazy." But the culture didn't allow it to be said out loud. That's not collaboration. True collaboration requires: • The courage to disagree openly • The curiosity to ask "why?" • The confidence to engage in respectful debate • The commitment to make the idea better through dialogue When we finally transformed our culture, we redefined collaboration completely: "If someone puts an idea on the table and you disagree with it, let's have a real conversation. You can't call the person an idiot, but you can question their assumptions and logic." The transformation was remarkable: • Ideas improved dramatically through honest dialogue • Innovation accelerated as different perspectives shaped solutions • Execution became faster without the "shadow resistance" • Trust skyrocketed across teams who knew where they stood with each other We watched as two or more parties engaged in actual discussion—not just pretending to agree—consistently produced better solutions than any individual could have created alone. People started looking forward to meetings because real progress happened in the room, not despite it. True collaboration requires: • The courage to disagree openly • The curiosity to ask "why?" • The confidence to engage in respectful debate • The commitment to make the idea better through dialogue The results speak for themselves: In 18 months, our redefined collaboration helped transform a 1,300-person organization from passive-aggressive to genuinely innovative. So ask yourself: Do people in your organization feel safe enough to disagree with leadership? Or are they nodding in meetings and undermining you in the hallway? That's the difference between true collaboration and just having meetings.

Culture isn’t built overnight—but it is built with intention. Over the years, I’ve come to see culture as one of the most powerful levers for driving results and building high-performing teams. It’s not a side task—it’s the foundation. I recently came across The Culture Code by Daniel Coyle and it felt like a reflection of what I’ve learned over time—through hands-on experience, workshops, and great mentors. Then this image showed up in my feed, and it captured four levers I’ve leaned on time and again: 1. Framework: Coyle’s principles—Build Safety, Share Vulnerability, Establish Purpose—are spot on. They shape how teams connect and perform. 2. KPIs: Culture can be measured. We tracked things like engagement, collaboration velocity, and product impact—not just deadlines. 3. Language: Words shape behavior. Saying “Let’s figure it out together” opens doors. “That’s not our job” closes them. 4. Learning: The books in the image? Many have shaped how I lead. Culture isn’t a one-time effort—it evolves. One example I’ll never forget: We formed a cross-functional product team with partners to accelerate development. Early on, it was clear their culture didn’t align with ours—and it caused friction. We took ownership, brought the product team fully in-house, and rebuilt from the inside. That cultural shift didn’t just boost morale—it accelerated delivery, improved product quality, and renewed ownership across the board. Building strong, intentional cultures isn’t just something I value—it’s central to how I lead and drive outcomes. Especially within product and engineering orgs where culture and execution are deeply linked. What’s one cultural shift you’ve led or experienced that made a difference? #Leadership #CultureCode #TeamCulture #EngineeringLeadership #ProductManagement #HighPerformance #OrganizationalDesign

Breaking the Cycle of Finger-Pointing: Building a Culture of Accountability and Collaboration One of the most corrosive patterns in any business is a culture of finger-pointing and deflection. When challenges arise, instead of solving the problem, time gets wasted assigning blame. Energy shifts from collaboration to defensiveness. Innovation stalls, morale drops, and the best people quietly start looking for the door. The truth is, blame rarely fixes the issue. What drives real progress is accountability paired with collaboration. So how do we shift from finger-pointing to forward-thinking? Model accountability at the top. Leaders must own their decisions, admit when things go wrong, and show that accountability is not a punishment, but a pathway to growth. Create safe spaces for dialogue. Teams need to feel they can raise concerns or mistakes without fear of public shaming. Psychological safety unlocks honest conversations that solve problems faster. Focus on the “what,” not the “who.” Root-cause analysis, retrospectives, and structured problem-solving redirect the energy from blame to understanding and prevention. Celebrate shared wins. When success is recognized as the result of collaboration, people become less interested in protecting their silo and more motivated to work together. Reinforce accountability as a positive value. This isn’t about punishment—it’s about trust, transparency, and shared responsibility. When businesses replace finger-pointing with accountability and collaboration, something powerful happens: problems get solved faster, trust deepens, and the entire organization becomes more resilient. In today’s fast-changing world, the companies that thrive will be those where people stop asking “Who’s to blame?” and start asking “How can we fix this together?” #leadership #accountability #culture

Your biggest threat isn't disruption. It's when your best people compete instead of collaborate. I've watched brilliant teams destroy themselves. Not because they lacked talent. But because everyone fought for themselves.  Instead of fighting for each other. The difference between strong and weak cultures? ✅ Strong cultures work together to win together. ❌ Weak cultures work alone and lose together. Here's how to build a culture where people actually work  with each other, for each other: 1. Start meetings with "who needs help?" → Ask this before anything else. → People share what's hard. → Others jump in to support. 2. Reward collaboration over competition → Track who helps others succeed. → Promote the people who lift others up. → Make teamwork the fastest path to success. 3. Share credit loudly and publicly → "Sarah closed the deal with Marc's technical support." → Name every person who contributed. → Make helping visible and valuable. 4. Create shared goals, not competing ones → Sales and product win together or lose together. → No department succeeds if another fails. → Align incentives toward collective wins. 5. Fire anyone who isn't a team player → One person working for themselves is poison.  → They'll rot your company from the inside out.  → Protect the many from the few. When people work with each other, for each other,  companies become unstoppable. When people work against each other, for themselves,  even the best strategies fail. Which culture are you building today? 👉 Repost to help more founders build collaborative cultures Follow Christian Rebernik for more on building strong teams

Reading ‘The Culture Code’ again made me reflect on what it really takes to foster collaboration. I recently spoke about the importance of culture in everything we do, and Daniel Coyle’s insights resonate even more now. It’s not just about having the right people or plans in place—it’s about creating a space where collaboration can actually thrive. Coyle emphasizes three key elements: building safety, sharing vulnerability, and establishing purpose. Safety is about making sure everyone feels connected and valued, and without it, collaboration falters. Vulnerability—though not easy—requires trust, and it’s what allows us to be open with one another, which in turn builds that trust. Purpose unites us, giving everyone a common goal to rally around. When I was asked how I describe culture, I said it’s always aspirational—each day, we choose to live it out in word and deed. It’s always a work in progress, something we must edit and focus on if we want it to make a difference. And just like culture, collaboration takes intention and effort. The real challenge is giving each other margin to make it happen—allowing room for mistakes, growth, and understanding. It’s something I’m continuing to reflect on, as we all strive to create environments where people can truly come together and do their best work. To make culture a priority, there are three key things we need to do: 1. Write it down: If you don’t declare it, it will never be a priority. 2. Recognize it when it’s working: When culture is embedded in everything we do, it becomes a compass for alignment. 3. It begins within: Where we find ourselves, we must be driven to get it right. And when we don’t—which will happen—we must make it right. Culture isn’t something that happens by chance; it’s something we intentionally create every day. It’s in our words, our actions, and our ability to learn from both our successes and our missteps. If we commit to making it a priority, we can shape not only our teams but the larger impact we want to have in the world. #Culture #Leadership #Learning #Communtiy #Teamwork * image purchased for personal use from Dani Saveker

You can talk about collaboration. But if your performance reviews only measure individual targets, don’t expect people to work as a team. You can promote “wellbeing.” But if your systems reward burnout with praise and promotions, the message is clear. Embedding culture means building it into how the organization runs, not just how it speaks. Here’s what that looks like in practice: Hiring: Do your interview questions test for alignment with values or just technical skill? Decision-making: Are decisions made with transparency and input or behind closed doors? Recognition: Are people rewarded for how they work, or just what they deliver? Performance: Do your metrics reflect the culture you want or just the outcomes you need? When culture only lives in language, it fades. When it lives in systems, it sticks. The real work isn’t writing better statements. It’s building better structures.

🚨 Just dropped: a fresh take on how to shape culture as you grow 🚀 Thrilled to share a new white paper I co-authored with Shonna Waters, PhD and Erin Eatough, PhD at Fractional Insights: The Adaptive Organization: Building and Evolving Culture Across Growth Stages. Culture is one of those things everyone talks about, but few know how to shape it—especially as a company grows. We wanted to change that. So we built a practical, stage-based framework to help leaders design and evolve culture to fuel performance, agility, and long-term success. ✨ A few highlights: 🔁 Culture must evolve as you scale. Our stage-based framework helps leaders grow without losing what made them great in the first place. ⚖️ Balance innovation and efficiency. These forces often pull in opposite directions—but adaptive organizations learn to navigate both. 🧠 Clear actions for leaders—from early-stage founders to enterprise execs. Innovation thrives when teams have protected space to explore, experiment, and collaborate. ⚠️ Common pitfalls at each stage—and how to avoid them. From nostalgia traps to cultural debt, we break down what to watch for and how to course-correct. We wrote this for founders, investors, and leaders who want to make culture a strategic advantage—not a side effect. Dig in 📝 Download the full report here: https://lnkd.in/gZjdPhfZ 👉 Let us know how these insights resonate with your own culture efforts Thank you Shonna Waters, PhD, Erin Eatough, PhD, and Fractional Insights - it was wonderful collaborating with you! 🌟 #culture #leadership #adaptiveorganizations