At our recent team onsite in San Diego, the agenda wasn’t shaped around big dinners or polished presentations. When we asked the group what they wanted to do together, the answers were rituals we’d loved before and wanted to keep alive:
- Infinity peanut (our design-thinking infinity loop exercise).
- Pictionary Telephone (aka Eat Poop You Cat 🙃).
- Team tee shirts.
On the surface, these are silly traditions, but they actually carry a lot of weight. The bad drawings from Pictionary Telephone now hang as office art. The tees feel like a uniform of belonging (it makes me smile every time I see someone in a meeting wearing a team tee). Even the infinity peanut loops back as a reminder of how we think and work together.
They’re fun, yes — but they’re also statements of identity:
- We co-create our experiences.
- We take the work seriously, but we don’t take ourselves too seriously.
- We’re willing to look a little ridiculous in service of connection and learning.
- We remember and retell our stories.
That’s the key: the rituals only become culture when the stories and artifacts keep them alive.
Here’s where I see AI being helpful. At Veracyte, I’ve already seen people use GenAI to generate artwork and slogans for peer-led learning groups during our initial GenAI rollout. It turned participation into artifacts that reinforced the group’s identity.
Imagine AI as a culture co-pilot:
- Turning silly hand drawings into tee-shirt or sticker designs (no graphic designer required).
- Weaving micro-stories from team rituals into onboarding packets or thank-you notes.
- Resurfacing shared jokes and touchstones at milestones so the culture “remembers itself.”
The tech doesn’t replace the ritual. It helps the meaning stick.
Question for you: What’s one team ritual you’d love to see preserved, retold, or reimagined with a little AI help?