The Power of Ritual with YouTube and Coda’s Shishir Mehrotra

The word ritual probably doesn’t conjure images of board meetings or product reviews.  But effective business leaders create rituals for their organizations that can focus, clarify, and inspire. In the latest Masters of Scale episode, I discuss the power of ritual with Shishir Mehrotra, who tapped the power of rituals to grow YouTube, and now runs Coda.io, which can actually help you codify and share your organization’s rituals.

You’ll hear how Shishir used lessons he learned from Coca-Cola and the British Olympic rowing team to set and achieve an audacious goal of 1 billion “watch-hours” per day (about double the size of the entire internet at the time he set the goal), why Austin Powers is one of the inspirations for Coda’s quest to reinvent the way documents are used, and how brushing your teeth and using deodorant can play a critical role in the pursuit of social justice.

As a special bonus, Shishir is sharing both his top rituals and the tools to implement them at your organization! If you’re not intentionally shaping the rituals of your company, you are most likely underdeveloping your culture and productivity. These rituals shape the drumbeat of your focus, execution, and team play:

As always, I'd like to hear your thoughts and reactions to this episode. What rituals have you created to serve as the foundation of your team?

You can share your rituals in the comments below. You should also submit your ritual to the Coda team; if they like it, they might make it available to all 25,000 of the teams using Coda.