The Whisky has been used for all kinds of workplace rituals since the founding days of our company. Not that we would drink all day, but still.
Every relationship and every organization needs rituals. Families, groups of friends, workplaces: Rituals develop everywhere and become part of organizational life.
But how exactly do rituals develop in the workplace? Let’s look at an example from Yonder, a B2B SaaS company.
How It All Started
When we founded the company, we had a tiny office in the attic of a beautiful old city house that Alex, one of my co-founders owned. In the beginning, it had a bare floor, no air conditioning, and often it was just the two of us sitting in the office, working away. And because Alex and I have been friends for some years before we founded Yonder, and because we both like Whisky — guess what: Every “first” in our young company was celebrated with a Whisky. The first contract. The first investor term sheet. The first test of every new feature. The first employee.
Thankfully, our first two employees Zoltan and Beat also liked Whisky. So we celebrated many more “firsts” with a glass of Whisky, and we also renamed the meeting rooms after our favorite Whisky brands.
The company continued to grow, and with Jonathan we hired our first British guy. He didn’t just join in the Whisky sessions but also assumed the inofficial responsibility of assuring sufficient Whisky supplies at all times.
The company continued to grow, and naturally, not all our employees are Whisky lovers (and that’s perfectly fine). Nevertheless, the ritual of celebrating a new deal win with a glass of Whisky has survived — even when a new deal comes in early in the morning.
Add The World Map
Some months ago, Susanne, our Chief Customer Officer, suggested we put up a large world map in the foyer of our office, showing the geographical location of our team as well as our customers. Serving the aviation industry, the dots of both our team and our customers are spread out nicely all over the planet.
The Combined Ritual
Of course, whenever we add a new customer, we need to update the world map. And building on the new deal win Whisky tradition, we decided to upgrade the ritual into something more formal: Whenever we win a new customer, we gather in front of the world map, ritually put the new dot on the map, and cheer to the new customer with a glass of Whisky (or whatever).
Because not everybody is based in Switzerland, we added a video call link to the invitation so that our international colleagues can also participate in the ritual.
We’re still working on the video setup for our international colleagues to see the new dot on the world map — work in progress. But the main thing is the ritual itself, not the quality of the video link.
