Learn to Create Your Own Cult in 5 Minutes
Qualtrics, acquired by SAP for $8 Billion opened their conference like this:
“Turn customers into fanatics. Employees into ambassadors. Products into obsessions. And brands into religions.”
Sound Cultish? The company’s now worth $21 Billion so I thought it might make sense to learn a bit more about how businesses convert people into fanatical devotees. To that end, “Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism” by Amanda Montell seemed like an appropriate place to start. I flicked open Amazon & bought the book.
What’s a Cult?
Good question. The word “cult” is thrown around enough that its meaning has become ambiguous. There are fan cults, political cults, cults of personality, religious cults, the cult of business, doomsday cults, & a whole cornucopia of other cult categories! Some are harmless, some have a positive effect on their members, and some are totally evil.. so it makes sense that we define what cults are before breaking down how they work.
A Cult is group of people who have a misplaced or excessive admiration for a person or thing.
This definition encompasses a broad range of organizations, many of them good, but all charismatic Cult leaders use language to do three things:
First, they convert people by making them feel special or understood.
Next, they condition people so that they behave in an intended way. Examples of this might include using their service, wearing their merch, voting for them, leaving a positive review on social media, attending an event, or buying their product.
Finally, they may coerce people into doing things they wouldn’t normally do.
I will be using the term Cult throughout this piece, but substantively, I’ll be discussing the business arena and the psychological tactics companies employ to create brand-obsessed cultures.
So how do Cults convert people into full-fledged members?
For starters, they give people a compelling purpose! Adam Neumann, the founder of WeWork, said the company wasn’t a real estate play or technology business. No, he was on a mission to “elevate the world’s consciousness” and to help people “make a life, not just a living”. “What is your superpower?” they’d ask recruits. Join the Mission.
But that’s not all. Cults build an in-group by giving people new identities. New Google employees become Nooglers. They evolve into Greyglers once they turn 40. In the intermediary, they are Googlers. Likewise, Amazon employees become Amazonian’s. Once hired, their first objective is to commit Amazon’s Leadership Principles to memory. If they can recite them verbatim they receive the ability to claim “I’m Peculiar”. This may seem.. peculiar (strange or odd), but it makes people feel special and gives them a newfound identity. Check out this article for a small taste of the effect this label has:
This brings me to one of the more interesting parts of cult-building; All cults create their own sovereign (independent) language, and with it, their own universe — it’s laws, truths, and value systems. They do this by co-opting existing words and acronyms, inventing new words, using powerful euphemisms, creating secret codes, giving people new identities, deploying buzzwords, enacting chants, developing mantras, and repeating slogans. This is so common that we even create our own lexicons within personal relationships!
Here’s a small sampling of the internal language used at Google:
Let’s also look at the Amazonian vernacular:
.. and finally the Facebooker (now MetaMate) dialect:
It may be off-putting to read about other people “drinking the kool-aid”, but for new entrees immersed in the process, this concoction is alluring. A larger-than-life purpose, an upgraded sense of yourself, and a brand new group lexicon. It’s the perfect combination fulfilling the paradox of human nature; letting you fit in, while simultaneously helping you stand out.
The Conditioning Process — Behavior Modification
In Crossfit, the acronym EIE means “Everything is Everything”. As the owner of Paradiso Crossfit, David Paradiso, says in this video:
“We have a saying — Everything is Everything. Your health and fitness are not just about the workout you do, but your whole life. It’s your nutrition, it’s your job, it’s your hobbies, it’s your friends”.
This expansion from specialized influence (for example, influence over a person’s life at the gym) to omnipotent influence (influence over all aspects of a persons life) is a signature component of the behavior modification process.
This extension takes many forms. Alphabet is building a communal living space, dubbed the Middlefield Park Master Plan. It’s a 40-acre combination of homes, retail stores, parks and recreational sectors, alongside an enormous corporate campus. Here’s an excerpt from the article:
Google’s plan seems like a great idea. Workers could pay less for housing and live right near their jobs in a pleasant environment. Still, you have to wonder — how this will impact people? Could Google employees become too dependent upon the company? Their job and social lives are all intertwined together. It’s easy to see a groupthink mindset forming..
Speaking of groupthink, a second conditioning technique is discussed in Cultish; the thought-terminating cliche. There are a lot of these that are thrown around (that’s fake news, this is misinformation, he’s brainwashed, she’s drinking the Kool-Aid, that’s a limiting belief, etc). These things exist, but they’re also used as a psychological sedative that stops people from thinking deeply about the substance of an idea, or at the very least, engaging in the refutation of an opposing perspective. The Dutch leadership consultant Manfred F.R. Kets de Vries says to combat this company leadership should be asking the following questions:
Does your company foster individuality & non-conformism? Do employees use their own language? Are any substantive disagreements explored? Or do people just echo their leader, using the exact same tone, speaking with the same verbiage? If your company culture mirrors the latter, you may be entering an echo chamber.
We talked earlier about creating in-group identities (Amazonian, Googler, MetaMate). The third & final form of conditioning I’ll discuss in this article is referred to as out-group branding or the us vs. them frame. In contrast to highlighting your strengths, out-group branding is the accentuation of your competitors weaknesses! (I hate to pause & gush here 😂😂😂 but we have a website I love that does exactly this. You can view it here). This can be extremely useful for distinguishing between your brand and your competitors.
I once read that the ancient Israelites believed words are Holy. Once uttered, they take on a life of their own, affecting and shaping whomever they touch, bending reality itself
I had fun writing this article and I felt expanded by this book. My hope is that this shed some light on potential culture pitfalls, as well as explored effective tactics that can be employed to grow brands that develop fervent support!
