![\"\"](\"https:\/\/intellerate.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/Screenshot-2025-07-29-at-8.38.36-AM-300x221.png\")
<\/p>\n[et_pb_section fb_built=“1″ _builder_version=“4.16″ global_colors_info=“{}“][et_pb_row _builder_version=“4.16″ background_size=“initial“ background_position=“top_left“ background_repeat=“repeat“ global_colors_info=“{}“][et_pb_column type=“4_4″ _builder_version=“4.16″ custom_padding=“|||“ global_colors_info=“{}“ custom_padding__hover=“|||“][et_pb_text _builder_version=“4.27.4″ background_size=“initial“ background_position=“top_left“ background_repeat=“repeat“ global_colors_info=“{}“]<\/p>\n
When I first launched this newsletter, my goal was to provide some practical tools for moving personal and organizational priorities forward.<\/p>\n
Most of my guidance has focused on task and process: how do you move from idea to reality?<\/p>\n
But task and process are only part of the story.<\/p>\n
In this newsletter, I\u2019ll focus on a piece that is often treated as a frivolous extra or dismissed as a waste of time.<\/p>\n
What is this piece?<\/p>\n
It\u2019s culture.<\/p>\n
Read on to learn why attending to culture must be integral to anything you take on.<\/p>\n
We live in an era that prizes productivity\u2014ideally that of the measurable sort.<\/p>\n
Advice about efficiency abounds. You can earn certificates in project management, take workshops on optimizing workflows, and read blogs promising to hack your way to a more productive workday.<\/p>\n
This trend has only intensified since the pandemic. With personal ties weakened through remote work and school, many of us (myself included) became laser-focused on what we had left: the task at hand.<\/p>\n
We modified our processes to get the work done apart and often asynchronously, thanks to the magic of Zoom, Slack, Teams, and other tech tools.<\/p>\n
Along the way, we lost sight of the people. Even with the return of onsite work and in-person school, the focus remains on task completion and process optimization.<\/p>\n
A few years after the pandemic, I participated in a workshop on facilitation that transformed how I approach nearly any new initiative, regardless of whether it requires any actual facilitation in the strict sense (e.g., running meetings, focus groups, or strategic planning sessions).<\/p>\n
The model of integral facilitation, developed by Steve Davis and Darin Harris, views facilitation as an interplay between four different forces, represented as four quadrants in this diagram (Credit: Living Giving Enterprises):<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
In this framework, culture is fundamental to the work, not incidental.<\/p>\n
Most organizations\u2014especially those strapped for resources\u2014spend the bulk of their time and energy on the two right-hand quadrants, which focus on managing the task and managing the group (process).<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have to get the real work done,\u201d so the story goes.<\/p>\n
Activities aimed at strengthening culture are seen at best as something extra, at worst dismissed as a waste of time.<\/p>\n
Through both my professional and volunteer work, I\u2019ve seen this attitude take a variety of forms:<\/p>\n
The next time you’re tempted to cut down on culture and connection in the name of productivity, remember that relationships are the invisible infrastructure that makes everything else possible.<\/p>\n
For your next big project, see what happens if you first seek to understand not just what needs to be accomplished, but how the people involved relate to each other and the work itself.<\/p>\n
As always, I\u2019m here to help.<\/p>\n
[\/et_pb_text][\/et_pb_column][\/et_pb_row][\/et_pb_section]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When it comes to getting things done, we usually focus on two elements: task and process. Yet there is another integral piece that is often treated as a frivolous extra or dismissed as a waste of time: Culture.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1246,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"on","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[12,17,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1242","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-communication","category-leadership","category-taking-action"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/intellerate.net\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1242","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/intellerate.net\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/intellerate.net\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/intellerate.net\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/intellerate.net\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1242"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/intellerate.net\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1242\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":100396,"href":"https:\/\/intellerate.net\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1242\/revisions\/100396"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/intellerate.net\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1246"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/intellerate.net\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/intellerate.net\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/intellerate.net\/de\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}