Learn about the Lumen Business Culture
Building a thriving business culture with a focus on organizational growth and excellence.
Watch our video about our Business Culture
What is a Good Business Culture?
At Lumen, with over two decades of expertise, we specialise in cultivating a high-performance corporate culture based on Judaeo-Christian values. Our unique approach differentiates us from other consultancy advisors, focusing on creating not just a successful but Positive, Effective, Continuous Learning team. That become Achievers, Innovative, Collaborative and Accountable. We call our business culture training and services Cultivo.
How can you create a positive business culture?
Creating a positive business culture begins with fostering an environment where growth, innovation, and trust thrive. Embracing mistakes as opportunities for learning and improvement allows team members to take initiative and take calculated risks without fear of judgment.
A forward-thinking, “prophetic” approach ensures that past errors serve as valuable lessons rather than barriers, emphasizing resilience and adaptability. Acknowledging and crediting every good idea inspires creativity and reinforces the importance of individual contributions. Lastly, leaders who admit their mistakes and model accountability set the tone for transparency and mutual respect, building a foundation for collaboration and continuous improvement.
A ‘No Fault’ Policy ensures that mistakes are learning opportunities rather than setbacks. This mindset encourages innovation and initiative, allowing team members to take bold risks and challenge outdated ideas without hesitation. Leaders who model accountability and transparency set the tone for a workplace that thrives on creativity and progress.
How can you create a positive business culture?
Embracing Mistakes and Initiative
In our high-performance culture, mistakes are viewed as growth opportunities. We encourage initiatives and foster an environment where taking risks is rewarded, not penalised. Reflective learning is integral to our process, where we analyse mistakes, not to assign blame but to understand and improve. Setting clear goals for improvement ensures that these lessons lead to tangible change.
Risk-Taking Culture:
At Lumen, we actively encourage calculated risk-taking to drive innovation and propel growth. Every team member is empowered to experiment, knowing that smart risks can lead to breakthrough opportunities.
‘No Fault’ Policy:
Operate under a ‘No Fault’ policy, meaning that mistakes are not met with punishment but seen as essential stepping stones in the learning process. This mindset ensures that everyone feels safe to take initiative.”
Adopting a Prophetic Approach
Our ‘prophetic’ approach emphasizes forward-thinking over dwelling on past errors. This mindset involves fostering a culture of openness and non-judgment, where every team member feels safe to take risks. We use past experiences as stepping stones for continuous improvement and resilience building. Implementing feedback loops and regular strategic planning sessions helps us to evolve and adapt continually, keeping our focus on future success.
Acknowledging the Creator of Each Idea
We believe in recognizing and giving credit to everyone who contributes valuable ideas. By consistently acknowledging the origin of each idea and ensuring its creator receives proper recognition, we cultivate a culture of innovation. This recognition inspires continued creativity.
When everyone sees that their ideas are consistently credited to them, it motivates all team members to innovate.
Admit Mistakes
Leaders must show accountability and admit mistakes, setting an example for transparency and growth. This approach builds trust and encourages a culture where everyone learns from setbacks, fostering innovation and teamwork.
Managing High-Performing but Negative Employees: When to Take Action
One of the key challenges businesses face is managing high-performing employees who exhibit negative behavior, withhold information, and refuse to engage positively with their team. While their skills may be valuable, sustained negativity can undermine team morale, productivity, leadership credibility, and talent retention.
If this behavior stems from deep-seated personality traits rather than temporary factors, corrective actions such as coaching or feedback may help. However, if they continue to resist collaboration and hinder team dynamics, letting them go may be necessary to maintain a high-performance culture.
Guilt-Based Culture vs. Shame-Based Culture
At Lumen, our Judeo-Christian values guide us toward a guilt-based culture, where individuals are led by an internal sense of right and wrong. Mistakes are viewed as opportunities for growth, prompting self-reflection and personal accountability rather than fear of judgment or “losing face.” This contrasts with a shame-based environment, where the primary motivator is external disapproval, often stifling innovation and open communication.
By emphasizing personal conscience instead of external shame, we foster:
Psychological Safety
Team members can take risks and learn from errors without worry of public embarrassment.
Greater Trust & Accountability
Owning one’s mistakes builds trust and encourages honest dialogue.
Innovation & Continuous Improvement
When missteps are stepping stones to growth, creativity flourishes.
Leadership Through Humility
Leaders model transparency by admitting errors, setting the tone for genuine teamwork.
This guilt-based approach is a key element of our “Cultivo” framework, ensuring each person feels valued and responsible for their own actions, ultimately fueling a high-performance, forward-thinking culture.
Knowledge Sharing and Collaborative Growth
Regular Sharing Sessions
Hold a 5–15 minute session once or twice a week where team members briefly highlight a recent challenge and explain their solution. This practice promotes collaboration, improves problem-solving skills, and upskills the team.
What is a positive work culture?
How to Create a Listening Business Culture?
A true listening business culture goes far beyond merely hearing words—it demands deep engagement so that ideas are fully understood. Achieving this requires two fundamental approaches. First, by emphasizing critical thinking in your communications, you ensure that ideas are properly analysed. Second, by reducing unproductive behaviours such as judgement, dogmatism, gossip, negativity, complaining, excuses, and exaggeration, you create an environment where innovation thrives. Over time, combining these approaches will allow great ideas to emerge while weaker ones fade away.
The Talmudic phrase איפכא מסתברא, meaning “the opposite views,” reflects the necessity of embracing diverse perspectives. It is a complex goal because most companies tend to adhere to a singular way of thinking. To break free from that mold, some companies even hire entire teams from the competition to challenge established thinking—bringing in fresh minds to solve problems, critique existing processes, and develop truly original ideas.
Let’s take a closer look at the issue of judgement. When judgement is exercised without proper critical analysis, it can undermine clear thinking and manifest in four harmful ways:
The Problem of Grouping
This is the tendency to oversimplify or misrepresent reality by forcing information into predefined categories. Such grouping can lead to poor decision-making and analysis by ignoring the complexities of each situation.
Conservatism in Perception
This bias involves clinging to established beliefs and resisting change, even when new evidence suggests a better approach. It prevents individuals from updating their views in light of fresh insights.
The Halo Effect
Here, a favourable overall impression of a person, company, or product colours the judgement of individual traits. For example, success in one area might lead to unwarranted assumptions about excellence in unrelated areas.
Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
This concept explains how expectations about a person or event can drive behaviours that ultimately make those expectations come true. In business, education, and beyond, believing in a particular outcome can inadvertently steer actions that ensure it occurs.
Complaining is negative when it is directed at the wrong people:
- If you vent to individuals who can’t help solve the problem.
- No clear fix exists: When there’s no obvious solution
By making critical thinking a cornerstone of your communication strategy, you create a culture where every team member’s contributions are both valued and rigorously examined—ultimately leading to a more effective, results-driven organisation.
How to Create a Listening Organisation?
In our high-performance culture, mistakes are viewed as growth opportunities. We encourage initiatives and foster an environment where taking risks is rewarded, not penalised. Reflective learning is integral to our process, where we analyse mistakes, not to assign blame but to understand and improve. Setting clear goals for improvement ensures that these lessons lead to tangible change.
Pushing Boundaries and Challenging the Status Quo*
Challenging the Norm: Embracing Contrarian Thinking
Sometimes, a concept is introduced to present an idea that runs contrary to what initially appears logical or natural. This approach serves as a powerful tool for exploring alternative possibilities and offering perspectives that might at first seem counterintuitive. For instance, when someone puts forth a particular argument, another person might respond that the opposite is actually correct. Not only does this strategy sharpen the discussion and encourage deeper exploration of all possibilities—it can also help anticipate competition in a bidding situation or reshape strategic thinking.
Take Bold Risks:
We believe in taking bold risks and refusing to settle for safe, conventional paths. This boldness has been key in pivoting and adopting innovative business models.
Challenge Outdated Ideas:
Continuously challenge outdated ideas and eliminate legacy processes, ensuring that your strategies remain fresh and forward-thinking.”
Propose Radical Solutions:
Every team member is invited to propose radical solutions. By thinking big and embracing unconventional ideas that is Customer-Centric, we create an environment where groundbreaking strategies are not only welcomed—they’re celebrated.
Adopting a contrary stance offers five additional benefits:
- Uncover Hidden Assumptions: Challenging the accepted view can expose biases or overlooked premises.
- Encourage Creativity: Counterintuitive thinking fosters novel solutions and innovative problem-solving.
- Improve Decision-Making: Considering an opposing viewpoint reveals potential pitfalls and opportunities.
- Strengthen Risk Assessment: Evaluating alternative possibilities enhances your ability to anticipate and manage risks.
- Spot Overlooked Opportunities: Stepping back from the obvious often uncovers new markets, approaches, or synergies that would otherwise remain hidden.
Perseverance and Disciplined Mind Fuel Innovative Breakthroughs
At Lumen Business, we believe that perseverance and a disciplined mindset are the catalysts for innovative ideas. By cultivating critical thinking and knowing what not to say, we unlock the organisational culture and discipline that fosters game-changing solutions. Our Fusion CRM strategy and expert sales training empower teams to push past the initial idea flurry and tap into truly innovative thinking. The first 3-6 ideas come easily, but perseverance drives us to overcome idea repetition (around 16-18 ideas) and reach the breakthrough zone beyond 20 ideas, where yielding groundbreaking insights can emerge. Therefore, this deliberate approach ensures our clients receive bold, forward-thinking solutions that propel their business forward.
Responsibility of Learning
The responsibility of learning is on the listener to confirm they understand what is required of them or the instructions they receive. This principle ensures clarity and accountability within the team, promoting effective communication and understanding.
Better Meetings and Better Leaders
At Lumen, one of the key benefits of our Business Culture and Sales Training programs is the emphasis on teaching the “why” behind every action, not just the “what.” This ensures that every meeting is not only purposeful but also effective and productive. By integrating this philosophy into the broader framework of the Lumen Business Culture, we empower teams to engage more deeply and foster stronger, more impactful leadership.
This approach resonates across all teams that interact with customers—whether in customer service, marketing, sales, support, or technical roles. By aligning everyone with a shared purpose, we create a unified, high-performance culture.
Never Interrupt Someone During a Meeting
In the professional realm, recognising the importance of meaning and value in communication is paramount. At Lumen, we emphasise the principle of non-interruption during meetings as essential to our high-performance business culture. This practice goes beyond mere courtesy; it directly addresses the fundamental human need for meaning and recognition. People crave meaning in their work, and denying them the opportunity to speak undermines this need. Given that opportunities for individuals to express their great ideas in meetings can be rare, it’s crucial to allow each person their moment to feel valued and make a meaningful contribution. This principle is not just about ensuring that everyone has a chance to speak; it’s about fostering an environment where individuals feel respected, contributing to their sense of purpose and belonging. By adhering to this rule and integrating it with other practices, we cultivate a respectful, engaging, and sustainable workplace culture that meets basic human needs for meaning, contribution, and love.
Productivity and Discipline: The 90-Minute Focus Cycle
Core Philosophy: Action Over Outcome
Focus on the process of doing the work rather than merely chasing results. Recognize and reward deep engagement, as sustained focus leads to meaningful progress.
Structured Work Cycles:
- 90-Minute Intervals:
- Work in focused 90-minute blocks. Interruptions during these periods can cost 20–30 minutes to recover, so maintaining an uninterrupted flow is key. Limit the day to four cycles, with the first two being the most productive.
Meeting Scheduling:
Schedule problem-solving meetings in the morning, when energy and focus are highest, and reserve non-critical meetings for the late afternoon.
Intellectual Violence
Imposing terms of reference is considered intellectual violence at Lumen. When terms of reference are imposed and not negotiated, it leads to misunderstandings and conflicts. For example, if you tell your roommate the room you just cleaned is not clean – the question is, are you imposing your definition of clean, or have you agreed on it beforehand?
Emotional Violence
At Lumen, we discourage putting intentions into action, which we call emotional violence. For instance, labelling someone as lazy or sloppy for how they did a project imposes a negative intention without understanding the context, leading to a demoralising work environment.
Building and Sustaining a High-Performance Business Culture
How to implement High-Performance business culture?
Our broad spectrum of services, from strategic planning to implementation, is tailored to enhance the high-performance culture of your organisation. We focus on immediate impact and fast agility. Sales Training And CRM Strategy
Achieving Transformative Outcomes in High-Performance Corporate Cultures
Our approach goes beyond traditional financial metrics. We foster a culture of joy and fulfillment, enhancing performance and making talent attraction easier. By focusing on a future-oriented mindset, we turn every challenge into a stepping stone for success.
Culture of Innovation
Openness and a Drive Toward Innovation
A shared belief that “nothing is impossible” fuels a mindset open to new ideas.
Freedom and encouragement of exploration foster a boundless sense of possibility.
Lack of Fear in Navigating the Unknown
A tendency to challenge hierarchy and protocols allows for crossing traditional boundaries.
A willingness to operate outside rigid rules emboldens experimentation and discovery.
The Daring Spirit
Convention and authority are often questioned, reflecting a bold attitude that propels individuals to break moulds.
This confidence fosters entirely new solutions and sparks innovation in unexpected ways.
Egalitarian Cultural Framework
A good idea can travel straight to the top if deemed important, bypassing formal managerial pathways.
Such openness ensures innovative thinking is not lost in bureaucratic processes.
Integration Into Our Culture
Recommended Daily Practices for Optimal Performance
Healthy Start
- Quality Sleep:
Ensure 8 hours of restorative sleep and aim to wake at sunrise to begin the day with clarity. - Digital Detox:
Limit early morning social media and non-essential phone use to protect the integrity of the first two focus cycles. This practice preserves dopamine levels for meaningful tasks and minimizes distraction. Avoid personal calls during these critical work periods.
Driving a Customer-Centric Transformation*
Customer-Centric Focus:
A shifted from being solely product-driven to being deeply customer-focused. By aligning your innovative spirit with your customers’ needs, we ensure that every risk taken, and every idea proposed ultimately delivers value to your customers.
Related Pages
For more Information on How to Implement Business Culture
Get in touch with us today to learn more about how you to revolutionise your organisational culture into the one that values growth, innovation, and every team member's contribution.
