8 Laws of Culture

Culture is the DNA of society: much like DNA contains the instructions to build a human, culture contains a set of rules, beliefs, and conventions that define our social order. Culture is the guidepost that anchors everything from our social norms to how we behave and what we think of our friends, neighbors and strangers. In short, culture is not only the lens through which we see and experience the world but is the force behind what we collectively make. Ignore culture and you are blind to what matters to us now — and what's coming next.

Over the last eight years, we have built one of the top culture-centric organizations in the world. Our process includes training algorithms, building platforms (Q), mapping and quantifying culture and developing culture-centric methodologies to help us translate human behavior into opportunities for our clients. We are learning so much on this journey that we believe we can help other organizations leverage culture to shape their own preferred future. 

Our firm, unlike most consulting firms, is anchored by 8 laws of culture and guided by a clear set of core values.

Here are the 8 laws of culture that anchor us.

sparks & honey’s 8 Laws of Culture:

1. Culture is horizontal. It reverberates across industries, communities and nations. Organizations must understand how the world in the horizontal can influence the vertical. Making connections between seemingly divergent signals, industries and themes. 

2. Culture moves at multiple speeds. From emerging memes to societal shifts, culture moves over the long-term and in real time. Both are important.

3. Culture operates at three distinct levels: Mega, Macro and Micro. Trends can affect culture in different ways (Mega / Macro / Micro), depending on how many people a trend reaches, the voracity of impact, and for what duration of time.

4. Culture is a chaotic system, but one that can be structured. By leveraging a cultural taxonomy you can be put language and structure around culture. Artificial intelligence tools allows you to do that at scale.

5. Cultural patterns become visible to the trained eye. To understand key shifts you need to examine culture over time. By creating a system to monitor culture daily, you begin to see patterns emerge at the horizontal and vertical. Tracking culture every day gives an organization the muscle memory to notice subtle, novel shifts and emerging patterns in culture.

6. Culture exists as tensions. A cultural tension exists when there are two opposite forces of a given trend. Neither is “right” or “wrong,” but both significantly shape its evolving definition. Choosing a side, or choosing not to choose, can be very powerful.

7. Culture requires a perfect partnership between human and big data. Relying solely on big data can lead us to the wrong decision or move us in the wrong direction. Big data needs human analysis and expert opinion to shape the last mile to a given decision.

8. Culture-centric organizations require augmented humans to work in a world of accelerating change. Artificial intelligence platforms will make organizations better, faster and smarter. The most successful modern organizations will put culture at the center of their organization and create a powerful differentiation by leveraging AI powered platforms.