Small Acts of Culture

Haiku, Meaning, and the Moments People Remember

Short words make meaning.
Small moments with big impact
Shape our cultures too.

What I love about haiku is that it forces you to choose what matters and demands clarity. Simple, efficient, to the point.

This same approach is a powerful way to shape culture. Most companies think culture is built through strategy, systems, leaders, incentives, decisions, you know… all the visible, expensive solutions people and businesses choose every day.

But culture’s real power is created in small moments where people make meaning and memories, including the ones that shape how they feel at and about work.

There is research behind this: emotion helps memories stick, and people do not always remember the whole experience evenly. They remember the moments that felt important, surprising, painful, meaningful, funny, or human.

This isn’t hard to do. It can be done in the simple daily tasks through an email, a story, a smile, a decision, a meeting, or a sentence someone carries with them longer than you expected.

The small stuff isn’t small when people remember it.

Meaning at work is made in moments. People remember what leaders do and don’t do, and then they decide what it means. Sometimes they get it right. Sometimes they get it wrong. Sometimes the meaning they make is not what you intended at all.

Here is the tricky part: A manager checking in with an employee before a hard meeting might mean, “I’m not alone here.” Or, depending on the relationship, it could mean, “I’m being micromanaged.” Culture is about sharing your intentions, knowing your people, and paying attention to how your actions impact them. Free advice: ask them how it impacts them :).

Support, recognition and communication are not one-size-fits-all. These are your key opportunities to shape meaning in the moments. The same action can feel thoughtful to one person and intrusive to another, so make sure you know and grow your people in the ways they respond to best. Again, it costs nothing to ask them :)

Big culture moves take a lot of effort and still miss the impact of a few honest, thoughtful one-on-one moments. So think of small, honest, memorable ways to connect those moments to what the company says it values.

Culture grows through repetition. What leaders repeat is what people believe, and what people believe becomes your actual culture.

This is where culture gets creative and fun, when you find clever ways to evolve your culture strategy. Not spreading random glitter, forced fun, or another company-wide initiative that will be abandoned three weeks later.

Creative, surprising moments are the ones people remember, the stories they share, the moments they want repeated. These moments turn into memories, good and bad.

Being creative takes work and you get much more out of this work than you will put into it, in loyalty, trust, innovation and enthusiasm.

A haiku-sized example: The day before a holiday, I would close our office early so my team could beat the traffic and chaos. I created a game around what time we would leave. My team became as excited about the game as the fact that we were leaving early. I tried many versions from everyone writing a number between 11a - 5 p on a Post-it, and drawing the winning time out of a basket.

But the one that was my team loved the most and never wanted to change, and even posted on Snap Chat, was the wheel.

We had a dry-erase wheel, among our many engagement tools, and each person could write two times on it. I always wrote “now” and 6 p.m. just to create excitement and suspense.

This very small moment that created memories, laughter, fear, excitement, and shared my personal value of making work fun.

The point is to make work mean something beyond your framed mission statement, in the daily moments where people experience leadership, actions and values.

A good haiku takes longer to create than typing a prompt into GPT and getting a barely intelligible word salad.  The same is true for culture, which grows from the smaller, thoughtful, intentional moments that people remember. While the moments may be small, the impact on your people and business could be great.

So my question for you is:  How are you creating meaning in moments in your culture?

Some small places to start:

• When people leave a meeting, do they know what matters most?

• When someone speaks up, especially with a different opinion, do you make it safe and worth the risk?

• When mistakes happen, does it become a search for blame or learning?

• When someone does quiet, invisible work, are they noticed and recognized?

• When work gets stressful, do your values become more important or do they slowly disappear?

Small acts of culture help people understand where they are, who they are with, and what matters here.

A sentence can become a story, a story can become a belief, and beliefs shape culture.

So start small. Do something that matters today. Begin to create a story worth repeating. Make the small moments mean something bigger.

Because the small stuff is not small when people remember it.