ripplemark Egypt's 'Be A Good Person' Culture Code
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The document outlines the organizational culture and values of Ripplemark, emphasizing the importance of learning, collaboration, and a growth mindset. It encourages employee involvement in creating a culture that prioritizes empathy, accountability, and constructive feedback while discouraging gossip and entitlement. Additionally, it addresses the evolving nature of digital marketing and the need for a customer-centric approach, focusing on measurable impact rather than superficial metrics.
ripplemark Egypt's 'Be A Good Person' Culture Code
- 1. ‘Be A Good Person’Culture. A guide to being a good rippler and human, if you want.
- 2. 2 “If we can define what organizational culture is, it gives us a handle on how to diagnose problems and even to design and develop better cultures.” - Michael D. Watkins “Culture is how organizations do things” - Robbie Katanga ”Organizational culture defines a jointly shared description of an organization from within” - Bruce Perron “What Is Organizational Culture? And Why Should We Care?” - in Harvard Business Review
- 3. 3 What is culture? “Culture eats strategy for breakfast”- Peter Drucker. Culture is a company’s persona, it’s a handbook that breathes life into the organization. It’s not a written in stone, culture changes with the evolution of the organization. Culture is how everyone should act with no supervision and promotes a sense of strategy that people are actively seeking to go towards as one big unit. Culture is our commitment to each other and to our clients. Culture is what the world sees when they enter our organization.
- 4. 4 Involve your team in the life of your business. if you do that, you’ll have real culture. Ripplemark wants you to be involved because culture is a collective creation, not a top down thing.
- 5. 5 We are ripplemark A Self Learning Digital Organization
- 6. 6 This document is part manifeto and part employee handbook. It’s part who we are and part who we as- pire to be.
- 7. 7 So, What Do We Believe in? Learning, reading, knowledge and heuristics (the capacity to self teach anything) People matter, empathy matters, vulnerability and love matter. In a cut throat profit driven world, people make all the difference in a company. Ownership (of your bad side, your good side, your work), results, accountability and organization. Transparent to our clients and our people. If you don’t know it, GOOGLE IT FIRST! In Google we trust. Be internet literate and understand how to look for information, if you don’t know how, we have a manual on this, because we have processes and guides for almost everything.
- 8. 8 Above all we believe that: “Success is making those who believed in you look brilliant” - Dharmesh Shah
- 9. 9 Knowledge, Reading, Developing Your Attention Span In A World Of Constant Stimuli--- Words To Live By Everyday Of Your Life. “Knowledge has to be improved, challenged, and increased constantly, or it vanishes.”- Peter Drucker. “The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can’t read them.”- Mark Twain. “The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you’ll go.”- Dr Seuss. “Read, read, read. Read everything -- trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You’ll absorb it.”- William Faulkner.
- 10. 10 We Are A Learning Organization Training Learning Training is a series of corporate programs built around L&D-de- signed content and L&D-ap- proved experts. Learning is an “enviroment and an “experience,” leveraging ex- perts, content, and materials sourced and recommended by external communities as well as by other employees and internal experts (not just L&D).
- 11. 11 We don’t have a water cooler so go gossip somewhere else we have one actually but the space around it is really small It’s very hard to enforce this part of our values. To not waste your time and energy complaining about someone is paramount to keeping your good energy as a professional and a person. If someone isn’t clicking with you, not getting that task done when you asked, etc. adopt constructive criticism, actively work with someone close to you in the company to bring the information to the person you’re seeking to improve on a work behavioral level. The resources on constructive criticism are endless, go get them yourself and read up! Some people aren’t easily brought to be criticized constructively or in any other way, you’re dealing with egos and that’s no easy task in any country, language or culture. Which is why, if you don’t accept some harsh truths about yourself or aren’t ready to be put on the altar of feedback, you’ll have a hard time developing professionally. You can learn this process, grow into that character and our culture is here to help you achieve this potential of a growth mindset.
- 12. 12 What is a growth Mindset? Growth MindsetFixed Mindset I can learn anything i want t. When i’m frustrated, I persevere. I want to challenge myself. When i fail, I learn. Tell me I try hard. If you succeed, I’m inspired. My effort and attitude determine everything. I’m either good at it, or I’m not. When I’m frustrated, I give up. I don’t like to be challenged. When I fail, I’m no good. Tell me I’m smart. If you succeed, I feel threatened. My abilities determine everything. “Talent and intelligence are not fixed traits.”
- 13. 13 We Can All Get Better at Getting Better- Here’s How to Get Better at It according toW Ulrich Bosser. “Many people mistakenly believe that the ability to learn is a matter of intelligence. For them, learning is an immutable trait like eye color, simply luck of the genetic draw. People are born learners, or they’re not, the thinking goes. So why bother getting better at it?” “A growing body of research is making it clear that learners are made, not born. Through the deliberate use of practice and dedicated strategies to improve our ability to learn, we can all develop expertise faster and more effectively. In short, we can all get better at getting better.”
- 14. 14 Organize your goals. Think about thinking (Metacognition: Do I really get this idea? Could I explain it to a friend? What are my goals? Do I need more background knowledge? Or do I need more practice?) Reflect on your learning (It turns out that we need to let go of our learning in order to understand our learning. For example, when we step away from a problem, we often learn more about a problem. Get into a discussion with a colleague, for instance, and often your best arguments arrive while you’re washing the dishes later. Read a software manual and a good amount of your comprehension can come after you shut the pages.) How to Get Better at Getting Better:
- 15. 15 Not all of our clients will be a good fit with us and vice versa. We are a results driven organization and require that our clients have a good grasp over the nature and complexity of digital marketing. We Don’t Sell Services To Companies Who Don’t Need Them.
- 16. 16 “Don’t be seduced into thinking that that which does not make a profit is without value.” - Arthur Miller Learning, experiencing, growing, if we were a solely profit driven organization we wouldn’t spend that much time to create a culture in the first place. Teaching our people new skill sets, soft or hard, is one of our most prized values and we’ll never stop doing that.
- 17. 17 We’re Not A Blaming or Multi Directional Culture. We take responsibility for our shit. We’re not pay check driven. We trust everyone and work actively to make that happen when we have new people learning our culture We act in the interest of the agency and the interest of our peers. We communicate EXTENSIVELY. WE DON’T Create Cliques (NO GOSSIP). All departments cooperate. We are not limited to job descriptions, we actively look for solutions.
- 18. 18 Leadership is paramount. We’re trying to create a non hierarchical organization but that of course requires a lot of education and self management within the agency. The absence of hierarchy actually promotes more responsibility among members of a group and we want all our people to feel a sense of freedom brought on by extreme diligence and attention to results not just work. “With great power comes great responsibility”- Spiderman.
- 19. 19 Teamwork! “Data reveals that successful teams share several defining characteristics: 1- Everyone on the team talks and listens in roughly equal measure, keeping contributions short and sweet. 2- Members face on another, and their conversations and gestures are energetic 3- Members connect directly with one another – not just with the team leader 4- Members carry on back-channel or side conversations within the team 5- Members periodically break, go exploring outside the team, and bring information back.” Taken from The New Science of Building Great Teams- The chemistry of high performing groups is no longer a mystery. By Alex Pentland. From HBR’s 10 must reads On Teams.
- 20. 20 “For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack” Rudyard Kipling - Author of The Jungle Book
- 21. 21 Imitate, Steal, Amend, Put Your Own. We approach all work with this mentality. “Someone somewhere has done what I’m doing and made it better, sometimes MUCH better. Why shouldn’t I learn from that person?” We follow copyright laws and understand intellectual property, but we also know that creative commons, Wikipedia, and internet piracy has advanced the knowledge of the human race far more than patents and copyrights have. We know what to steal, how to show where it came from (citations! Hello!), and how to abide by the law. “what we call originality relies on a good deal of imitation, and even a bit of theft.” - James Polchin
- 22. 22 It’s a superpower when you think about it; to have a sense of our performance, why we feel low or up or energized or confident or disengaged, well turns out, after years of scientific research that EMOTIONS ARE NEGOTIABLE. Why It’s Important to Get A Sense of Emotional Per- ception as A Rippler.
- 23. 23 “When you experience affect without knowing the cause, you are more likely to treat affect as information about the world, rather than your experience of the world.” Basically, what this means is that we are prone to accept our emotions as accurate evaluations of what’s happening in the world, unless we know the causes of these emotions. For example, people report more happiness and life satisfaction on sunny days, unless they are explicitly asked about the weather. In the same way, it’s easy for us to think that the reason we feel bored and stressed at work is because our job sucks...sometimes it actually does suck… But maybe if you got better sleep and stopped eating fast food and more veggies, you wouldn’t feel so irritated during the weekly meeting. And sometimes the difference between feeling anxious and overwhelmed and feeling challenged and motivated is more exercise, less staying up late and maybe taking time for yourself (meditate, read and strengthen your mindfulness practices) This entire section is from this youtube channel: called What I’ve Learned, amazing channel.
- 24. 24 We can’t snap our fingers and change our emotions whenever we want, but when we become aware of the various causes of our emotional state, we can calmly separate ourselves from the emotion and start making changes that will allow for better emotional responses.
- 25. 25 The Overthinking Generation Studies made by the Dr Susan Nolen -Hoeksema show that young and middle-aged people overthink more than older people (those over sixty-five) do. This may be because of four recent cultural trends: What Are The Things All Ripplers Should Avoid?
- 26. 26 People today have an overdeveloped sense of entitlement. People believe they deserve to be happy, rich and successful and that no one has the right to stop them from getting what they deserve. People tend to focus more on getting what they deserve and what is holding them back rather than on what they do have. It also puts many in potential conflict with everyone else. 1. Entitlement Obsession.
- 27. 27 People tend to rely more on quick fixes rather than taking the slowly working through problems. If one feels sad or dissatisfied, one looks for some quick solution, like taking prescription medication or alcohol, shopping, taking up a new sport, or some frenetic activity. In many cases, however, quick fixes only provide a temporary or even wrong solution. 2. Compulsive Need for Quick Fixes.
- 28. 28 Don’t seek to get approval right away, or to make an impact as soon as you walk in somewhere. everything good takes time.The hard part is what success thrives on. You don’t get to be truly valuable in your work without suffering in the beginning. If you truly love what you do, they will all pass. Delay gratification and practice stoicism. It’s also about patience, in a hyperconnected, newsfeed driven, binge watching, stimulus from everywhere, “look at me selfie” culture, PATIENCE is everything. MORE ON This Delayed Gratification Though…
- 29. 29 Popular psychology and culture encourages people to express themselves more and develop greater self-awareness. Many people tend to take this too far, however, becoming too self- absorbed and hyper-analyzing themselves and their emotions. Many concentrate too much on “staring at their navels” and pondering the meaning of every twist and turn in their feelings. 3. Belly Button Culture. Watch Patrick Bet-David “People demand freedom of speech as a compensation for the freedom of thought which they seldom use.” - Søren Kierkegaard
- 30. 30 Distraction Is The Enemy Multitasking Myth According to the US National Safety Council, mobile phone use while driving leads to 1.6 million crashes annually. Texting while driving is 6 times more likely to to cause an accident than driving under the influence of alcohol is 1 out of every 4 traffic crashes that occur in the US are caused by cell phone usage. Businesswoman Arianna Huffington speaks about multitasking being the enemy of creativity. Task- switching is a sure way to create lots of mediocre things. The ‘fear of missing out’ due to not being online and available causes stress and lack of concentration. We are more effective when we focus.
- 31. 31 Comfort is a drug, once you get used to it, it becomes addicting. give a weak man consistent sex, good food, cheap entertaiment ad he’ll throw his ambitions right out the window. The comfort zone is where dreams go to die.
- 32. 32 The key to understanding & overcoming procrastination
- 34. 34 What Is Digital Marketing? Let’s define it by what it’s not: It’s not social media, it’s not growing page likes, shares or reaching the maximum amount of people, it’s not advertising, it’s not influencers, it’s not shove in your face marketing, it’s not boosting posts, it’s not sitting around posting, it’s not gathering any numbers to make your report look smart, it’s not promising sales when you don’t have an online store, it’s not campaigns, it’s not bending over backwards when it doesn’t make sense.
- 35. 35 Marketing to customers online is no longer going to an agency, asking it to do some posts & boosting content to thousands of people while the agency mindlessly charges for a non result driven service. By results we don’t mean likes or shares, we mean being able to measure whether these activities have had a significant effect on the company’s bottom line. To achieve this we teach our people to be customer centric, consumer journey driven, and integrated digital marketers. These areas are all part of a larger discipline of inbound marketing that hasn’t quite seen the light of day in Egypt. This is due to many factors, some macro, involving the way our country understands data, and some micro, involving the nature of clients seeking digital services. Be that as it may, we’re working towards turning the discipline of digital marketing in Egypt to catch up with the current global norm. We’re ripplemark, we’ve been around for a little while, we’re humble but fierce in what we do.
- 36. 36 Our Marketing Credo: Ask Yourself, Always: Being more human and helpful in the way we market and sell to clients and their customers. Am I actually making an impact on my client’s bottom line? Can I measure this impact? If I can’t then it’s not marketing, it’s B.S. How can I improve my knowledge skill sets to benefit my peers, clients and ripplemark as a whole?