What interests me this week

Got hit with insomnia last week and break the two-year long streak of What Interests Me This Week. What a shame, gotta pick my battles.

This week's thought relates to my effort of soft-leading my development team. The team runs fine, morale is generally good but I wonder if I can nudge it towards building a culture more wilfully. This is beyond my pay grade.

A team culture should be something that outlive the core members. Here's how I think about it: culture is made out of a series of rituals; and rituals's existence are supported by stories. Therefore the work of culture-building rest on the act of storytelling.

I've basically described the framework of every major religions. The framework itself is easy enough to understand, but to fast track it in a team of a dozen non-organically is something else. I can't even begin to imagine trying to describe this high level thought to team members.

I only know enough to be dangerous, but don't know enough about how to approach such a thing. Does it start with stories then hope for it to evolve into rituals; or does it start with designing rituals, then cherry pick the stories to support them?