Down, Up, Forward
2022 took the Culture Refinery team on a non-stop, fast-paced journey that felt as though we were building a race car while circling the track at full speed! The journey perfectly reflected our word for the year: audacious. This was fitting as audacious also happens to be one of our key brand values.
We started Culture Refinery with the bold vision to unleash the collective genius of traditionally marginalized talent around the world. This led to our mission to reimagine, redefine, and refine corporate culture, professional development, and DEI initiatives in order to help partner organizations cultivate inclusive workplaces everyone can show up whole and thrive. We believe when that happens, when everyone feels safe enough to tap into their full brilliance, we can make quantum leaps in success, however you measure it (impact, profitability, productivity, innovation, etc.).
Making big, bold moves requires audacity.
We formally launched Culture Refinery in Barcelona, Spain, at a three-day all-company retreat with over 200 employees with one of our largest clients, Hotjar. That event was focused on cultivating a high-performance team culture through effective feedback and demonstrated one of our key beliefs, it all starts with culture. On the DEI side, we launched our Pursuit of Equity series with our largest non-profit client, Interact of Wake County, as part of their Racial Justice Initiative. We rolled out our culture audit assessment and report culminating in a strategic planning session with another non-profit client, Activate Good, helping them to build out a diversity recruiting strategy. Additionally, we continued to support our other wonderful partners through engaging workshops, data-driven strategy, and individual executive coaching.
Although the economy is more volatile than we’d like, we are still running full speed ahead because we know in economic downturns, your talent is your most valuable resource. While many companies are quick to cut spending around talent development and headcount, we know the companies that perform best both during and after an economic downturn are the companies who continue to hold on to their talent, value their talent, and invest in the development and growth in their talent, strategically. So we are full speed ahead developing innovative ways to maximize your talent development investment as we continue to partner with organizations who are committed to their people while weathering this storm and coming out on top.
Moving forward, we will be bolder, more intentional, and even more audacious than we have been before. Our talent deserves it and our businesses and bottom lines require it.
But our question is: Are you ready to be just as audacious in 2023?
Here’s our Year-End Review
What Went Down? What happened this year?
At Culture Refinery, we’ve delivered a number of really engaging learning events rooted in equity, psychological safety, and neuroscience, which are all the pillars we stand on. As we’ve been building out the organization, we’ve built up our teams with powerhouse executive coaches and talented senior consultants to help serve our partner clients. Our back office is nearly fully staffed and we’re actively recruiting for an executive assistant. Every goal we’ve set, we’ve been hitting out of the park, one by one by one by one.
11 Organization Partners | 21 Learning Events | 52 Coaching Engagements | 25 Organizations Impacted
Your Turn: What went down for you? Consider all the things that happened within this past year. What kind of “car” have you been driving within your career or your organization? Also, think about the goals that were set and which ones you achieved. Everything is relevant.
What Came Up? What insights did you glean from this year?
At Culture Refinery, our insights are around better serving our clients with engaging content, making it even more consumable, and further building out our learning strategy to incorporate asynchronous learning, microlearning drips, a learning subscription, and a retained coach on record offer. You can look forward to so much more accessible content for your organization’s cultural growth.
We’ve known all along that there really needs to be a focus on training our leaders, especially newer leaders and those in transition. In a lot of our conversations with our executive coaching clients, we found out they either found themselves promoted to leading teams without formal or proper preparation or they’re leading a team of others who really need this training.
We also know that teamwork and collaboration continue to be critical to success and will be even more critical as economic pressures require many to do more with less. We introduced a number of our team development solutions in 2022 and will continue to help our partners optimize their teams and speed the time between formation and high performance.
Your Turn: Based on what went down within your organization, what is it that has come up? Did you realize there were any gaps between what you wanted to do with your people and what actually happened? Were there any symptoms of “quiet quitting” or anything similar?
How Are You Moving Forward? How will you address what you now know in the next year? What actionable steps will you take?
At Culture Refinery, we have quite a few things planned to move forward. We will roll out our cultivate leaders program to help prepare and refine your new managers and middle managers to be better stewards of talent. Through this program, they’ll be prepared to lead the organizations and workforce of today and the future.
Our Cultivate Teams program will continue to evolve to help leaders cultivate teams where all of that talent can thrive. We are also flushing out our Pursuit of Equity learning series and will continue to roll modules out to partner clients committed to cultivating inclusivity and belonging. You can also look forward to the launch of our Culture Conversations program which includes us coming together with industry leaders through fireside chats, interviews, panels, discussions, and all-around conversations related to culture, inclusion, equity, and psychological safety. More to come on that, but if you’re interested in hosting a Culture Conversation with us, we’d love to get you on our calendar (we have a few slots remaining for Black History Month and Women’s History Month).
Lastly, we’re excited to roll out our Culture Calendar which is chock full of 80+ culturally significant holidays, celebrations, and key dates that organizations can leverage to plan out their event calendar, ensure they are being inclusive in celebrating and recognizing a broad array of people within their organizations throughout the year. We will have support for those calendar ideas on our website and for those subscribed to our email list. You can get yours here.
Your Turn: Consider next year’s goals. What kind of support do you need to get there? What are the steps that you need to take? And what are you willing to commit to in order to get there? Depending on the work you’re ready to do, we may be that support for you. Be sure to subscribe to our Culture Calendar.
Cheers to An Even More Audacious 2023
In 2022, we noticed some trends you likely noticed as well. Quiet quitting became a negative term for people setting boundaries at work. We’re ready to ditch the negative connotations that come with setting boundaries and celebrate the fact that people are creating the balance they need.
Even in challenging times, your talent is speaking up. They are your biggest investment. They are your number one resource. In 2023, we want to play big to make sure that talent is supported and backed up.
Willing to play it bigger in 2023? If you’re ready to invest in your most valuable resource (your talent) to create high-performing teams, effective leaders, and equitable workspaces, then we’re ready to be your strategic partner on this journey.
2023 is waiting for you. Let’s go into it with audacity, together.
