We are building culture and here it is.
It has been several months after starting to use the physical space assigned for our studio. For the first few months, it was a mess. Used desks and chairs from the department were the only things we could use. We finally started to embed the warm atmosphere through new desks and chairs from September 2020. At that time, we were only seven and the COVID-19 outbreak situation was really bad. (Yes, yes — we know it is worse at this moment, April 2021, but we are used to it.) Not many of us came to the studio.. So, we never had any problems that arose within the limitation of the space.
It was spring of 2021, when the crews were gradually realizing the space was not enough for all of us. In contrast to the fall of 2020, we are now eleven and many of us are coming to the studio. We also brought more furniture to the studio that made the space smaller. The problem that we were noticing was not only about the size of the space but also the new behavior appearance happening at the studio due to the COVID-19 outbreak situation. Since we are still fighting against the virus, the courses are all conducted online. We got a new friend named Zoom. (Maybe, our crews are not eleven, but fourteen, including — Zoom, Miro, and Notion.) We took courses and meetings with Zoom in the studio. If you had any chance using Zoom in a crowded space or multiple people at the same space, you know what is the problem. Microphones catch other crews’ voices making it hard to concentrate for Zoomers. For non-Zoomers, sensitive air is created for keeping the studio quiet. It wasn’t anybody’s fault. We are all new crews of NDS, so we were still in the process of building the culture.
So guess what we did. We formed a student body and made the very first NDS Crew Manual. SPL also thought about what a studio is. Throughout all these discussions, we had a fruitful time to think about who we are and what culture we pursue. On top of that, we got a sip of understanding the system thinking and behavior economics! We had to analyze the behavior pattern of our crews. Then, set plenty of incentives or privatization to nudge crews to permeate into the intended culture.
When the student body was making the NDS Crew Manual, we focused on culture, not rules which restrict crews’ behavior since we are not a company with hundreds of people but just a studio with eleven crews. We realized that rules may stress people out and the number of crews are just enough to mutually share and make consensus about our ideal behaviors at the studio. This doesn’t mean that rules are villains. It means that creating culture is more powerful and suitable for our case than rules. (We are already victims of bureaucracy in the school, so everyone will panic if we set a bunch of rules.)
Unfortunately, NDS Crew Manual looks like so easy work. Yes, it is just short writings explaining how to utilize space and tools in our studio, but it is the outcome with many discussions.
Now, three weeks had past after sharing the NDS Crew Manual to all of the crews. What’s happening? So far, the culture is smoothly landing on the studio space. However, we know it is not perfect. We need to keep check the changes of mood in the studio. We are still building the culture. We hope to tell you more stories about the NDS culture sometime later. Well-being, café, clubs, and so on. We have a lot to talk about!
