From Visionaries to Victors: Why Acculturation, Not Just Strategy, is the Key to Business Success

Entrepreneurs, senior leaders and C-suite management, even aspiring team leaders in sales or production, will invariably possess an unwavering inherent yearning for year-on-year growth, not just in all things material, but in personal development too. Their motive is typically based on achieving a progressive path, conveying their value to the wider workforce – both up and down the rank and file. Or perhaps just to get another notch on the “curriculum vitae” bedpost.  In any event, they are a breed of hard-working, committed individuals, where those who stand beside them will feel invigorated and more alive, feeding off their passion and drive.

The journey from starting out with this vision in all its guises, maintaining the ambition with a sustainable high-performing team, and taking another step on the ladder of success each year, is fraught with peril. Progress comes with the challenge of larger numbers in every aspect of the business, and none more so than with people and the multitude of different personalities and attributes the newfound wider workforce brings.

The Cultural Differences  

There’s a hybrid of millennials and Gen-Z cohorts, each having their own unique brand of work-life balance requirements, a strong desire for purpose-driven work, and a view on how much technology plays a part in their social scope and workplace interaction. Layer this with old school contemporaries like me, baby boomers and the Gen-X stalwarts, who remember top-down management, and the new transformational leadership ideas of the 1990’s – often being thrown around the room intransigently – it’s not surprising we see roadblocks at every turn of our teambuilding journey.

That moment when a Gen Xer calls a Gen Zer, they don’t pick up the call. But text back right away with a message, “how can I help?”

Introspective Self-Analysis 

The solution rests in placing ownership at the heart of the team. Where each individual takes charge of their own development, having worked in small focus groups to establish what best practice looks like, they self-evaluate their strengths and areas for improvement and begin to design their own course of action. This intrinsic approach to systems, mindset and performance analysis allows enough scope for each team member, regardless of their differences, to adapt the over-riding strategy to their own personality idiosyncrasies.

Beginning with Leadership  

While acculturation must start at the top, with senior leaders as cultural champions, recognising that everyone on the team has some form of leadership responsibility is key. The rationale is that anything any one of us might do or say will always have some influence on somebody else. Seeking to model these four leadership traits into every person’s approach to work brings consistency in the sociocultural aspects of their role.

• THE ROLE MODEL leads by the actions and examples they expect from their colleagues. They have a healthy understanding of their own strengths and weaknesses, demonstrate a strong commitment to the organisation’s values and vision, and are open to feedback and learn from their mistakes, exhibiting a growth mindset. By their very nature, and in the way they carry themselves, they inspire others to strive for excellence.
• THE SOCIAL INFLUENCER is skilled at passionately conveying to the rest of the group in their circle,  the values and vision of the business. Leaders articulate a clear vision and set of goals. They ensure these objectives are not only comprehensively conveyed but also embraced by their colleagues. With clarity, they foster alignment, encouraging every team member to work toward a unified purpose.
• THE ACTIVE COMMUNICATOR is skilled at using purposeful language that fosters trust and empathy. Carefully chosen words will influence the way someone feels about what you’re saying or asking them to consider. Leaders need to recognise different ways of communicating, depending on how someone is feeling. And by listening carefully and reading the room, effective communicators will find pathways to working more collaboratively, identifying and resolving issues more effectively and being able to consider collective perspectives for important decision-making processes.
• THE REFLECTIVE MENTOR leverages the core process of introspective self-analysis for personal development and learning agility. In 1933, psychologist John Dewey first declared that “We do not learn from experience… we learn from reflecting on experience.”  It was 50 years later, in 1983, when urban planning scholar Donald Schon wrote The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think In Action, setting out four components of The Reflective Model.

Creating Winning Teams 

Embedding this team mindset requires using introspective self-analysis and then applying the Ten-Minute Rule to a team member’s routine each day. This purposefully facilitates turning intentions into actions through a cycle based on Schon’s Reflective Model of:

FRAME (analyse best practices;) ACTION (initiate a ten-minute exercise;) REFLECT (evaluate progress;) and REFRAME (develop changes)

By institutionalising this ten-minute exercise into both the business strategy and internal leadership mindset, we set tiny new routines over a period of time, and align every individual’s daily efforts with the core vision. The engine of acculturation is the consistent application of small, daily rituals.

The Ten-Minute Rule involves:

• Intelligent Self-Analysis: In small focus groups, leaders candidly assess their performance against agreed-upon best practices, identifying one area for improvement.
• Daily Affirmation and Action: They use a journal to pledge a commitment for a small, ten-minute action that will improve performance in that chosen area, followed by the reason why this action will help.
• Tracking: Progress is tracked daily on a 1-10 scale. This act of journaling promotes awareness and accountability, as merely becoming conscious of your actions begins to shape them.

Whether it’s improving focus, enhancing resilience or managing communication, this daily self-directed habit, supported by principles of emotional regulation, will, over time, allow a series of new behaviours to transition from short-term memory to long-term operational routines.

A Blueprint for Team Acculturation 

Following this process and cascading this knowledge and skill throughout the workforce, leverages compliance and consistency using the science of learning and repetition. The framework adopts a blueprint based on neuroscientist Stanislas Deheane’s Four Pillars of Learning:  Attention; Engagement; Feedback; Consolidation.

By encouraging and supporting self-analysis, we empower individuals to pay attention to areas for improvement. Engaging in the daily ten-minute rule attains feedback and reflection on progress. Consolidation is then realised when we implement a forward chain throughout the layers of each team in the organisation. Each stakeholder acquires the know-how as an initial recipient of the learning; then as a receiver of the learning to enable them to teach the same; and finally as a deliverer of their learning to the next direct reports or peer group. This makes it seamless for each person to become well-versed in multiple layers of new knowledge, skills and practice.

Once we institutionalise the Ten-Minute Rules this way, the consistent application of small, daily rituals engineers multi-levels of acculturation.  By empowering individuals to engage in self-analysis and apply the daily ten-minute rule, your organization can turn the ambition of a few into the measurable, accountable action of everyone. This ensures that your collective journey moves from Visionaries to Victors, securing success one small, purposeful step at a time.

Written by Kevin Mark-Watts.