Designing Team Rituals
Team rituals are the recurring practices that define how a team operates and embeds culture into daily work. Great companies have a small number of 'golden rituals' that every employee knows. These aren't just meetings - they're named, templated practices that serve as the engine of operational efficiency and culture.
The Guide
4 key steps synthesized from 2 experts.
Name your rituals
Great rituals have names. Naming creates shared language, makes the ritual memorable, and signals that this practice is intentional and important. If you can't name it, it's just a meeting. Named rituals become part of company culture in a way that generic meetings never do.
Featured guest perspectives
"Great companies has a very small list of golden rituals. And there are three rules of golden rituals. Number one, they're named. Number two, every employee knows them by their first Friday and, number three, they're templated."— Shishir Mehrotra
Make rituals known by the first Friday
If a ritual matters, new employees should learn about it in their first week. This tests whether the ritual is truly central to how you operate or just something that happens occasionally. Golden rituals are so fundamental that onboarding is incomplete without them.
Featured guest perspectives
"Great companies has a very small list of golden rituals. And there are three rules of golden rituals. Number one, they're named. Number two, every employee knows them by their first Friday and, number three, they're templated."— Shishir Mehrotra
Template your rituals for consistency
Golden rituals follow a consistent template so everyone knows what to expect and how to participate. This isn't bureaucracy - it's efficiency. Templates reduce coordination cost, ensure nothing falls through the cracks, and make it easy to onboard new participants.
Featured guest perspectives
"Great companies has a very small list of golden rituals. And there are three rules of golden rituals. Number one, they're named. Number two, every employee knows them by their first Friday and, number three, they're templated."— Shishir Mehrotra
Design rituals that are personal to your team
The best rituals aren't copied from other companies - they emerge from your specific context and values. Document what works for your team and iterate on it. These become your team's unique operating system, not a generic framework applied from outside.
Featured guest perspectives
"I think the rituals that I've been writing down are very personal. They're my take on how to do this."— Lane Shackleton
Common Mistakes
- Having too many rituals, diluting the importance of each
- Copying rituals from other companies without adapting them
- Letting rituals become stale instead of iterating on them
- Not documenting or templating rituals, making them inconsistent
Signs You're Doing It Well
- New employees learn your golden rituals in their first week
- Your rituals have names that everyone recognizes
- Templates exist and are followed consistently
- Rituals feel like valuable time, not obligatory meetings
All Guest Perspectives
Deep dive into what all 2 guests shared about designing team rituals.
Lane Shackleton
"I think the rituals that I've been writing down are very personal. They're my take on how to do this."
Shishir Mehrotra
"Great companies has a very small list of golden rituals. And there are three rules of golden rituals. Number one, they're named. Number two, every employee knows them by their first Friday and, number three, they're templated."
Install This Skill
Add this skill to Claude Code, Cursor, or any AI coding assistant that supports Agent Skills.
Download the skill
Download SKILL.mdAdd to your project
Create a folder in your project root and add the skill file:
.claude/skills/team-rituals/SKILL.mdStart using it
Claude will automatically detect and use the skill when relevant. You can also invoke it directly:
Help me with designing team ritualsRelated Skills
Other Hiring & Teams skills you might find useful.
Building Team Culture
Successful high-stakes partnerships (like co-founders) require clear domain separation and a commitm...
View Skill → →Evaluating Candidates
Hire for team balance and complementary skills rather than searching for a single candidate who exce...
View Skill → →Conducting Interviews
Improving hiring success requires transforming vague 'gut feelings' about candidates into structured...
View Skill → →Onboarding New Hires
Publicly documenting your philosophy and mental models acts as a passive onboarding system for futur...
View Skill → →