Corporate culture runs deeper than sports
October 2nd, 2010
Sheq culture symbols, dramatisation, and mascot programmes unlock huge organisational value, but ‘opportunist’ events and mascots soon fizzle out.
Industrial theatre practitioner, Marié Beytell-Coetzer, writes; “We had advised several employers to base their Sheq culture activation programmes on their own enduring symbols, values, aspirations, strategies and interventions, not on one theme, like the 2010 Soccer World Cup season.
“I get goosebumps from the value that Sheq programmes, linked to culture programmes, unlock in organisations. My industrial theatre approach had developed from drumming circles to sustained development of values, interventions and small mascot dramatisation sagas.
“Some mascots could even span the entire careers of Sheq champions in management positions. I am working in tandem with Sheq consultants, and my instinct tells me we are onto something big.
“But culture and values could not be determined in a boardroom or in one meeting. We should keep digging until we discover gold, in terms of real team cultural symbols, treasures and values.
”I think we need an international conference on the subject of finding and dramatising corporate culture and values.
”The process of selecting a mascot this year tended to piggyback on the Soccer World Cup, so I saw a lot of mascots with soccer ball heads. Eish! I tried to persuade them otherwise, arguing that after the Soccer World Cup, soccer ball heads mascots would become redundant and out of fashion.
”Many companies want to use soccer and South Africa’s aspirations for international recognition, to push Sheq culture campaigns. I doubted how much impact this approach would have, and how long it would last.
”I may be wrong, but it seemed that some managements did not know how to investigate what really makes their industry, themselves and their employees tick.”
Vuvuzela v Macbeth
Sheqafrica.com editor Edmond Furter comments; Thank you Marie for these deep thoughts. The SA World Cup mascot is a humanoid leopard or cheetah, thankfully without a soccer ball head. And hopefully without the ‘cheat’ associated with some sponsored sports.
Team sports like cricket and relay have been used in team building, motto analogies, and, some claim, in character building. Every time I hear a vuvuzela I doubt the formative value of supposed sports culture, to spectators, and to our still forming and changing national culture.
Some sports players, like entertainers, are deserved role models, others are not.
Babylonian, Akkadian, Greek and Egyptian cultures, which remain models to Rome, England, USA, SA and the world, hosted sponsored sports, with ‘bread and circus’ for the masses on public holidays, but developed their culture in public ritual and sponsored theatre, not in the gladiator arena.
Julius Caesar is a case in point. He sponsored sorts and gladiatorial entertainment, where free bread was dispensed (bread and circuses), to get elected, but Roman culture was rooted in archetypal symbols, myth, Sybelline books that Julius Ceasar himself kept as senate curator, tragedies and comedies of great complexity, and democratic processes inherited from Greece.
Sports and circus amused people’s idle conversation, but did not inform or sustain cultural symbols or Roman identity, other than dramatising militaristic fitness and pretences of superiority.
Issues of gender, identity, individuality, maturity, adversaries, adversity, fate, and chance, all relevant to national and corporate culture, were developed in dramas like Gilgamesh, Iliad, Medea, Osiris, Macbeth, and ironically,Julius Caesar.
I could not picture ball sports playing much of a rule in culture, except in light relief.
HR culture priorities
African human resources practitioners were polled on their priorities in the Knowledge Resources 2010 HR survey, and the 380 employers participating selected these ten HR priorities;
Culture of high performance
Customer service and relations
Leadership and management development
Performance management
Skills development
Corporate values and ethics focus
Corporate governance
Talent management
Change management
HR strategy development and implementation
Six of these 10 HR priorities involve corporate culture, which could be considered an ingredient, or even a product, of any ogranisation. Running an organisation means running a culture. It deserves more attention than tuning in to national games and consuming sports paraphernalia.
PHOTO; One of several product mascots linked to soccer. The theme may have moved some product, but did it move organistaional culture?
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