Last week was about culture and relationships.  This week is about team effectiveness, culture, and individuals.  We’ll reflect on these things by thinking about Dairy Queen Blizzards and Culver’s Concrete Mixers.  In case you’ve never had a Blizzard or Concrete Mixer before they are ice cream treats where you take a base flavor of ice cream and add in some kind of mixer like oreos, M&Ms, fruit, etc.  It is the combination of the base flavor AND the mix-ins that create delicious gloriousness.

Growing up I would go to Dairy Queen and get an Oreo Blizzard, which was always made with vanilla soft serve ice cream as the default base and then they would mix in oreos and blend it all together.  I’m assuming Dairy Queen made it this way because they viewed vanilla as a neutralflavor.  A few weeks ago I went to Culver’s and ordered a Concrete Mixer with oreos and cookie dough.  The person at the register asked me if I wanted it made with vanilla or chocolate custard.  That simple question stopped me, because I realized that the base flavor would impact the overall Concrete Mixer experience.  A Concrete Mixer made with vanilla is very different than one made from chocolate, strawberry, mint, etc.  Each of these base flavors would drastically change the taste of the Concrete Mixer.  On that day I learned that there is NO neutral base flavor.  Some flavors would enhance the mix-ins and some make things worse. 

What does this have to do with work?  How good a Concrete Mixer tastes is based on the combination of the base flavor of ice cream and the mix-ins.  In a similar way, the effectiveness of any team is based on the combination of the baseline culture and the individuals you mix in.  The baseline culture of a group consists of the things that team values and the rules it follows.  The individuals consist of everything they can bring to the table from skills to energy.  In order to have something amazing, BOTH the culture base and the individuals need to fit and work well together. 

The tricky part in all of this is that it’s easy to overlook the fact that all cultures have a base flavor and that some base flavors work better with a wider array of individuals than others.Some teams have great baseline cultures that accentuate the individual flavors that people bring and the result is a high performing team.  Some teams have a baseline culture that isn’t so great, and the baseline flavor never mixes well with the individual people which results in dysfunction.  Think about your own experience for a moment.  How would you describe the base flavor of the culture of where you work?  How would you describe the base flavor of the culture of your team?  How do some of these base flavors of culture bring out the best in you?  How do some of these base flavors of culture bring you down? 

The challenge: Are you cognizant that the base flavor of any culture is NOT neutral?  What are you doing to help create a better base culture that brings out the best in us?

Have a jolly good day,

Andrew Embry