10-Point Plan — Attracting Second Generation Heroes and Champions

Employees as Volunteers and Volunteers as Employees

In less than three years, Lady Gaga has built an incredible business that counts on a fan base of fans drawn consistently closer to her. The fans aren’t loyal to her music. They’re loyal to her and each other. She’s accomplished this feat with a true understanding of the function of rituals and symbols as connectors in a community culture.

Jackie Huba wrote a detailed description of how Lada Gaga built a culture by naming her fans, giving them a cause, adding symbols, and making them rock stars.

You can do the same thing inside and outside your business.

How to Use Ritual and Symbols to Build a Loyalty Culture

You don’t have to be a rock star with special hand signal to make folks feel important to be part of what you’re doing. What’s important is to draw folks closer by valuing them and their ideas.

• Start with Stories Send the 8-12 people, we’ve been talking about out to gather stories of the heroes of the business. Have a storytelling lunch hour. Choose the story that defines your business or organization. Teach it to everyone. Let them make it their own. Invite them to tell their own version of the story. My community story is about taking folks to lunch and tipping the whole restaurant. It’s a story of how my dad built his business by honoring everyone who helped his business thrive.
• Call it something. I called my dad’s community barn raisers, because they built the business together. Are you ship builders? world changers? Does your name come from the company itself? Are the folks who work on the Chevy Volt the Voltage Vanguard? Are the folks at our event SOBConners? Pick a name that describes the higher purpose.
• It’s a quest. Decide what will be the symbol of your community. Blog badges and t-shirts are too easy. Look around for the habits and symbols that you already use. You’ll find them in the ways you greet each other and the ways that you celebrate things that go well. The hashtag handsign has become a symbol to recognize someone in social media. What symbols can sit on their desks or in their pockets to remind them of the quest that you share? Every barn raiser should have a tiny hammer on a sticker, a key chain, a card, a pencil, something to remind us of why we do what we do.
• Be inclusive. Not everyone is right to move your quest forward, but many people outside your business are. Don’t limit your name or your community to only those who get a paycheck from the business. Include family, friends, partners, volunteers, vendors, fans, and anyone who can proudly wear your logo and tell your story.
• And don’t forget those sayings that grew from stories within your group experience. Say them often. Share them with new friends and share the meaning behind them. They help explain how the “family” and the culture came to be and grew.

If you constantly invite new heroes to join in the group and notice their ideas. You’ll find inside every collaboration a chance to celebrate with a ritual or two.

How would you start establishing signs and rituals that develop a sense of inclusive identity within your group. ?

READ the Whole 10-Point Plan Series: On the Successful Series Page.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz on your business!!

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