Take a Dose of Community and Call Me in the Morning

I was listening to Malcolm Gladwell’s book “Outliers: The Story of Success” when it became apparent that I had erred in my post titled “Creating a Culture of Community” back in May (link below).

http://buddhaceo.blogspot.com/2011/05/creating-culture-of-community.html

In that post I made a big deal not just about the importance of culture in business, but about a very specific kind of culture that you want to create in your organization called a culture of community.  It turns out I was dead wrong.

I massively under-estimated the importance of creating not only a strong culture in your business, but specifically a culture of community.  It is at least 100 times more important than I implied.  As a matter of fact, your very life depends on it; both the quantity and quality of your life as it turns out.

How can this be?  Well in Outliers, Galdwell retells the story of The Roseto Mystery.  The executive summary of the The Roseto Mystery is that in the 1950’s a physician by the name of Stewart Wolf became aware of a medical mystery happening in the small village of Roseto, Pennsylvania.  During that time period heart attacks were an epidemic in the U.S.  Yet, rarely did anyone in the town of Roseto under the age of 65 suffer from heart disease.

Wolf conducted an exhaustive study and concluded that the urban legend about the lack of heart disease in Roseto was in fact true.  Further as it turns out, the Rosetans were dying of only old age and nothing else!

This led to an additional intensive study to determine the underlying cause of this phenomenon.  They ran through the usual suspects; diet and exercise, genetics, regional bias, etc.  In the end the only reason that held up under the microscope of rigorous scientific analysis was that the Rosetans longevity both in terms of quantity and quality was due to the unique culture of community within the village of Roseto.

Now it is true that we can create this Roseto effect in our time outside of work.  We can strive to make our residential communities more Roseto like.  But, if a culture of community is so directly linked to the quality and quantity of our longevity then why stop there.  Why leave our health and happiness to chance.  We will likely spend from 1/3 to ½ of our adult lives at work and so the type of culture we create there will have an undisputable and significant impact on our overall quality of life.

With this new evidence and emphasis on the importance and impact of a culture of community I urge you to re-read and apply the principles I shared in my post back in May on the best practices I have found for creating a culture of community.

Please share with us your best practices for creating a culture of community.

We would love to hear from you!