The Shortened Week

Well hey there welcome back to another edition of The Culture Junky weekly blog. I hope you’re having a great start to the week so far after returning from the long weekend. Presidents Day is a different one from some of the other three day weekends we honor over the course of the year. Smack in the middle of winter, we can’t get the friends and family together to grill like we would say Labor Day at the end of the summer.  

It’s those three day weekends we love so much that often times can be difficult and almost problematic for some of those organizational cultures out there. You see, a best in class culture will engage everyone as soon as they set foot in your organization.

The ‘problem’ if you could call it that, with three day weekends is the sort of ripple effect they can creat when the culture in your organization isn’t the best. You may get folks who look at the Friday before the three day weekend as a day to slack off and disengage because “we’re coming up on a three day weekend.” On the flip side, you may see and hear the same exact thing but on the other side of the weekend, folks may return on Tuesday and just not be engaged, taking half the day to ‘settle in’ and wasting time that could be spent engaged and productive. 

I like to reference it from time to time but you may have seen a video that I’ve used of a pee-wee hockey team taking the ice for a game, only they just can’t seem to get it together and one by one go sliding across the ice despite their best attempts to get their skates under them. You don’t want those little guys to be a metaphor for your team and your culture. 

That best in class culture I was talking about earlier, it’s one that you’ll know it to see it. When we’re going into a long weekend, or we return from a long weekend and your team is able to balance the joy of seeing each other after an extra day away with the things that have to get done, then you know your culture is engaging everyone on the right level. 

Come to think of it, maybe those three day weekends are more important than we think, they might just be the indicator we need to identify the state of our culture and assess how we’re doing based on how easily our team can assimilate back into the culture after the time off.