My name is Inge Wulff and I work in the Brand and Admissions team at Nova Pioneer. I was also recently chosen to be a Culture Captain for the organisation. This isn’t the role that I first applied for when I joined the Nova Pioneer team but it is the passion project that has helped me find my purpose.

The beginning of my Nova Pioneer Journey

I first heard about Nova Pioneer from a former colleague who told me to “apply for a job, I don’t know which job you’re keen on, but culture-wise you are definitely a fit”. She then proceeded to send me a video of teammates dancing to a Beyonce song. 

I had never seen so much joy in one place, I could not put in an application fast enough. The interview process also gave me a good feeling, as it was much more a conversation than a panel discussion about my employment history.

My friend was right, this was the place for me and much more than before I really wanted Nova Pioneer to hire me. They did and I have now been with the company for two and a half years. 

After the happily after, you find more joy

What I can confirm, the joy feels as real inside the organisation as it did on YouTube. At first, I couldn’t figure it out, what was the magic sauce of this place?

Was it because they hire people who are passionate about changing lives, maybe it is because there is incredible commitment to providing education that is innovative and collaborative or perhaps because the students display leadership from an early age?

I had no idea, but all I kept telling people was (is) “everyday I am happy at work, maybe not all day and often for different reasons, but I never have Sunday blues anymore” and I began to realize how rare that was.

Demystifying Culture at Work

What is organisational culture? To me, it is every single interaction you have with a company. It is more than culture principles, it is internal communication, rituals, events, everything from hiring to resigning and all that’s in between. Ultimately it is how the organisation treats teammates and how teammates treat each other.

Nova Pioneer is building schools across the continent. Education is a tough business, even if you remove the element of rapid growth. And yet, no stress is visible. Rather, no matter what campus you walk into you feel joy, laughter and positivity. For a while now I didn’t know how, but I absolutely wanted to get involved in building this magic sauce. 

Becoming a Culture Captain

I did some investigating, some meetings and even some convincing presentations to woo leadership into giving me a shot. Now part of my job involves working with the Global Culture Manager, TC Nkosi, to build organisational culture for the South African team.

Building culture is like creating music, there are so many elements and you need to make sure that the beat, lyrics, percussion and sound are all in harmony. It is also hard to measure success, but you know when the tune (culture) is off. This makes it exciting, challenging and addictive. 

My first task was putting together a dance video (three years after the original one that sold me the company) of our now much bigger organisation. I was terrified, but Bruno Mars and five incredible part-time choreographers (teachers and central team mates) came to the rescue to create some of our own magic/ To me, the energy is palpable and really sums up the ‘gees’ it takes to tackle a task as challenging as educating future leaders. 

I have no idea if I will be any good at this culture thing, but I am grateful for the opportunity to try out some things that hopefully can also make my teammates happy every day at work.