A Wiser Workplace
One of the most rewarding aspects of founding a company is the opportunity to define the culture. It is also one of the most challenging parts of the job. Culture isn’t something that you can talk about once and then mark off of your to-do list. It happens every day. It is defined as much by what you don’t do as what you do do, as much by your blind-spots as your vision.
I’ve had a meditation practice for more than five years, but until very recently I didn’t feel comfortable talking about it with my team. At the root of my discomfort was a fear of imposing some kind of ‘spirituality bias’ on my team. I don’t want to build a culture that reinforces any particular metaphysical/spiritual/religious orientation. There are no job openings at polySpectra for God, Satan, Buddha, or The Flying Spaghetti Monster.
Then I met Wisdom Labs. I haven’t met too many teams who have collaborated with both Starbucks and His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Their super power is their ability to take practices that have been developed over millennia within spiritual traditions and translate them into actionable, evidence-based tactics for the modern workplace. They have a real knack for creating zero-woo-woo mindfulness practices that are themed around common workplace challenges. (No spirituality required.)
Of course I jumped at the opportunity to help Wisdom Labs refine their app, Wise@Work, by volunteering my team as beta-testers. It was a really powerful experience for us. I’ve been continuously impressed with the content — there is a lot of variety, but each meditation is specific and tactical. I have been using it every week to help myself navigate stress and distractions.
I am super excited to share that the Wise@Work app is now publicly available. This news is so new that Wisdom Labs hasn’t even had time to officially launch it themselves — I am giving you the inside scoop! Check it out:
I have no incentives here, I’m just a raving fan. My current favorite meditations on the Wise@Work app are ‘Feeling Overwhelmed’ and ‘Prioritizing Your Workflow’. Whether or not you check out the app, I hope you’ll walk away from this post thinking about how to develop ongoing practices to reinforce a workplace culture that reflects your values.
If you want to get even more intentional about startup culture, interpersonal dynamics, emotional fluency — I’ve compiled all of my painfully-acquired lessons learned in my new online course Lab Rat Launchpad.
For those who missed it, I recently wrote about how we re-booted our founding values.
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