The Culture Kit with Jenny & Sameer – Details, episodes & analysis

While “psychological safety” has become somewhat of a buzzword in management circles, it’s a concept that forward-thinking leaders dismiss at their own peril. 

“I cannot think of a place where lower psychological safety would help you in any way,” says Harvard Business School Professor Amy Edmondson, known for her pioneering research on the topic. “Lower psychological safety would make you take fewer risks, but not necessarily better risks. So having anxiety about what other people think of you isn't a great state for optimal performance.”

In this bonus episode of The Culture Kit with Jenny & Sameer, Edmondson, along with WD-40 CEO Steve Brass, joins hosts Jenny Chatman and Sameer Srivastava to discuss how to create a culture of psychological safety—and why it matters. This session was held November 13, 2023 as part of the Culture XChange series sponsored by the Berkeley Center for Workplace Culture and Innovation and is being broadcast publicly for the first time. 

• The Fearless Organization: Creating Psychological Safety in the Workplace for Learning, Innovation, and Growth. By Amy C. Edmonson. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2018.
• “What Google Learned From Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team.” By Charles Duhigg, The New York Times Magazine, Feb. 25, 2016.
• “When feeling safe isn’t enough: Contextualizing models of safety and learning in teams.” Sanner, B., & Bunderson, J. S. (2015). Organizational Psychology Review, 5(3), 224-243. https://doi.org/10.1177/2041386614565145
• Tribe Culture: How It Shaped WD-40 Company. By Garry Ridge. Telemachus Press, 2020.
• Full Episode Transcript

Do you have a vexing question about work that you want Jenny and Sameer to answer? Submit your “Fixit Ticket!” 

Learn more about the podcast and the Berkeley Center for Workplace Culture and Innovation at www.haas.org/culture-kit.

*The Culture Kit with Jenny & Sameer is a production of UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business and the Berkeley Center for Workplace Culture and Innovation. It is produced by University FM.*

When Patrick Collison and his brother John Collison founded digital payment company Stripe in 2010, he didn't come in with “any kind of enlightened leadership expertise or genetic muscle memory.” As the company took off and grew to a dominant platform with $1 trillion in total payment volume and millions of customers, its culture grew more intentional—and strategic. 

“Because Stripe's domain is really complicated and the details really matter, if we make a mistake—just one mistake—there's a very good chance that somebody's paycheck is wrong…There's a culture at Stripe of just really prizing the small details,” he says.

In this bonus episode of The Culture Kit with Jenny & Sameer, Collison shares his leadership journey and the evolution of Stripe’s unique culture in a fireside chat with hosts Jenny Chatman and Sameer Srivastava. This interview took place on April 16, 2024 as part of the Dean’s Speaker Series, co-sponsored by the Berkeley Center for Workplace Culture and Innovation. Bringing in a diverse mix of preeminent business leaders, the Dean's Speaker Series provides the Haas community with insightful perspectives on effective leadership and opportunities for thought-provoking discussions.  Learn more.

Full Episode Transcript here.

Do you have a vexing question about work that you want Jenny and Sameer to answer? Submit your “Fixit Ticket!” 

Learn more about the podcast and the Berkeley Center for Workplace Culture and Innovation at www.haas.org/culture-kit.

*The Culture Kit with Jenny & Sameer is a production of UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business and the Berkeley Center for Workplace Culture and Innovation. It is produced by University FM.*

The world of work is truly a work in progress. There are so many unanswered questions.

What's the best approach to bringing workers back to the office? How can you keep remote and on-site workers from forming silos? How can you restore trust after layoffs? Is it possible, or even desirable, to get back to the culture you had before the pandemic? There’s lots to think about, and we’ll be thinking out loud in our new podcast: The Culture Kit with Jenny and Sameer.

I’m Jenny Chatman. And I’m Sameer Srivastava. We’re professors at UC Berkeley’s Haas School who have dedicated our careers to studying and advancing workplace culture.

We'll think through the questions you're struggling with today and share insights based on evidence from the latest research. You'll come away with concrete steps you can take to start fixing your company's culture right away.

Tune in to The Culture Kit with Jenny and Sameer. Starting April 2 on your favorite podcast platform.

Do you have a vexing question about work that you want Jenny and Sameer to answer? Submit your “Fixit Ticket!”

View the full transcript.

Do you have a vexing question about work that you want Jenny and Sameer to answer? Submit your “Fixit Ticket!” 

Learn more about the podcast and the Berkeley Center for Workplace Culture and Innovation at www.haas.org/culture-kit.

*The Culture Kit with Jenny & Sameer is a production of UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business and the Berkeley Center for Workplace Culture and Innovation. It is produced by University FM.*

What are the benefits and challenges of running a fully remote company? What does research show about the shift to “work from anywhere”? In this bonus episode of The Culture Kit, host Sameer Srivastava interviews Prithwiraj (Raj) Choudhury, the Lumry Family Associate Professor at the Harvard Business School, and Brandon Sammut, Chief People Officer at Zapier, on how to use technology and organizational insights to create high-performing, inclusive, and engaging remote work cultures.

Choudhury is one of the pioneers in research on the future of work, especially the changing geography of work. He was included in Forbes’ Future of Work 50 list last year and Time’s Charter 30 list of thinkers and innovators shaping the future of work in 2024.

Sammut is a two-time chief people officer currently at Zapier, a software automation platform with an all-remote team that spans over 40 countries. He believes that remote work is the way to expand both individual opportunity and business results, drawing on his prior experience in talent acquisition, talent development, strategy, consulting, business development, and venture capital.

This episode is based on a CultureXChange forum held on April 11th, 2024 by the Berkeley Center for Workplace Culture and Innovation. Learn more.

Full Episode Transcript here.

Do you have a vexing question about work that you want Jenny and Sameer to answer? Submit your “Fixit Ticket!” 

Learn more about the podcast and the Berkeley Center for Workplace Culture and Innovation at www.haas.org/culture-kit.

*The Culture Kit with Jenny & Sameer is a production of UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business and the Berkeley Center for Workplace Culture and Innovation. It is produced by University FM.*

In a fireside chat with host Jenny Chatman, best-selling author Michael Lewis shares the inside story of the strange culture Sam Bankman-Fried created at his failed crypto exchange, FTX. Lewis got to know SBF for his latest book, "Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon." The story is a fascinating example of a strong organizational culture gone terribly wrong. 

Lewis is known for his New York Times bestselling books, including Moneyball, The Big Short, Liar’s Poker, and The Blind Side. He started his career in finance on the bond desk at Salomon Brothers, and then left the business world to become a journalist. His books tell stories about real characters and provide insights into the business world—from working on Wall Street to the 2008 financial crisis to the rise and fall of cryptocurrency. 

This interview was held on November 8, 2023 as part of the Dean's Speaker Series at Berkeley Haas. Bringing in a diverse mix of preeminent business leaders, the series provides the Haas community with insightful perspectives on effective leadership and opportunities for thought-provoking discussions.  Learn more.

Full Episode Transcript here.

Do you have a vexing question about work that you want Jenny and Sameer to answer? Submit your “Fixit Ticket!” 

Learn more about the podcast and the Berkeley Center for Workplace Culture and Innovation at www.haas.org/culture-kit.

*The Culture Kit with Jenny & Sameer is a production of UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business and the Berkeley Center for Workplace Culture and Innovation. It is produced by University FM.*

With the world of work constantly evolving and the introduction of new technologies like AI, how can leaders prepare themselves to successfully lead their companies into the new frontier?

On the season finale of The Culture Kit, Haas School of Business professors and organizational culture experts Jenny Chatman and Sameer Srivastava are joined by a special guest. Laszlo Bock, one of the leading industry voices on people management, was the Senior Vice President of People Operations at Google, served as the CEO of Humu, and then co-founded Gretel AI. He's also the author of The New York Times’ bestseller, Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead. 

Jenny, Sameer, and Laszlo answer a question from Melissa Wernick, the Global Chief People Officer for Kraft Heinz, on what key skills leaders will need to be successful in the evolving workplace. They also announce the Berkeley Transformative CHRO Leadership Program that they just launched through Berkeley Executive Education.

Do you have a vexing question about work that you want Jenny and Sameer to answer? Submit your “Fixit Ticket!” 

You can learn more about the podcast and the Berkeley Center for Workplace Culture and Innovation at www.haas.org/culture-kit.

*The Culture Kit with Jenny & Sameer is a production of Haas School of Business and is produced by University FM.*

1. The best leaders are diagnostic and deliberate. They look at things on a situation-by-situation basis and ask themselves: How can I add value here? And they plan for that.
2. Cultivate a broad and flexible set of leadership styles. Situations are varied and vast, so have a broad and flexible leadership portfolio that you can draw from depending on what the circumstances are.
3. The best leaders recognize that they're never actually done learning. Leadership development is a lifelong pursuit, so keep working on it and be a student always (as we say at Haas).

• Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead by Laszlo Bock
• Navigating the Jagged Technological Frontier: Field Experimental Evidence of the Effects of AI on Knowledge Worker Productivity and Quality [Harvard Business School]
• Getting to Diversity: What Works and What Doesn’t by Frank Dobbin and Alexandra Kalev
• Right Kind of Wrong: The Science of Failing Well by Amy Edmondson
• Creativity from Constraint? How the Political Correctness Norm Influences Creativity in Mixed-sex Work Groups [Administrative Science Quarterly]
• Awe: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life by Dacher Keltner
• CEO Fires 90 Percent of Support Staff, Saying AI Outperforms Them [Futurism]
• How Google Sold Its Engineers on Management [Harvard Business Review]
• Chatman, Jennifer A., Sameer Srivastava, and David Rochlin, “How Lyft’s Strategy Informed their Return to Work Approach.” University of California, Berkeley Haas Case Series, 2024. forthcoming.
• Maersk: Driving Culture Change at a Century-Old Company to Achieve Measurable Results [Berkeley Haas Case Series]
• Kaiser Permanente: The Electronic Health Record Journey [Kaiser Permanente International]
• The Next Normal: Let’s Rewrite the Rules Together [Mars]
• Vodafone: Managing Advanced Technologies and Artificial Intelligence [Harvard Business Publishing]
• The Berkeley Transformative CHRO Leadership Program co-led by Laszlo Bock [Berkeley Exec Ed]
• Full Episode Transcript

Do you have a vexing question about work that you want Jenny and Sameer to answer? Submit your “Fixit Ticket!” 

Learn more about the podcast and the Berkeley Center for Workplace Culture and Innovation at www.haas.org/culture-kit.

*The Culture Kit with Jenny & Sameer is a production of UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business and the Berkeley Center for Workplace Culture and Innovation. It is produced by University FM.*

A “yes man” culture that is adverse to dissent can not only be stifling for employees, but in some cases, can be downright dangerous. So how do you create a culture where everyone feels empowered to bring their ideas to the table? 

On today’s episode of Culture Kit, Haas School of Business professors and organizational culture experts Jenny Chatman and Sameer Srivastava answer a question from Shuchi Mathur, the Vice President of Customer Experience at Reelgood. Jenny and Sameer share examples of companies they’ve worked with like Pixar and Netflix that have built cultures around celebrating failure and farming for dissent. 

Do you have a vexing question about work that you want Jenny and Sameer to answer? Submit your “Fixit Ticket!” 

You can learn more about the podcast and the Berkeley Center for Workplace Culture and Innovation at www.haas.org/culture-kit.

*The Culture Kit with Jenny & Sameer is a production of Haas School of Business and is produced by University FM.*

1. Be intentional – recognize that you need to go out of your way to prioritize dissent; otherwise you might inadvertently stifle it.
2. Build systems – some organizations even establish processes to encourage people to take deliberate action to surface dissent. This is mission-critical in an organization where life and safety are on the line.
3. Model what you want to see – leaders need to actively model a willingness to admit when they’re wrong and own up to mistakes. At the same time, they can seek out and defer to expertise, rather than acting like they always have the answers.

• Boeing Hit by Damning FAA Report Faulting Safety Culture [Bloomberg]
• Fixing Boeing’s Broken Culture Starts With a New Plane [Bloomberg]
• Boeing: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO) [YouTube]
• The Lasting Leadership Lessons From The Challenger Disaster [Forbes]
• The Challenger Launch Decision: Risky Technology, Culture, and Deviance at NASA [University of Chicago Press]
• Sales Misconduct at Wells Fargo Community Bank [Harvard Business Publishing]
• Zappos has quietly backed away from holacracy [Quartz]
• Structure That’s Not Stifling [Harvard Business Review]
• 'Farming for dissent': The strategy that helped Reed Hastings turn Netflix into a $240 bn company [Business Today]
• Reed Hastings: This 3-word tactic helped make Netflix a $240 billion company [CNBC]
• Netflix: A Creative Approach to Culture and Agility [Harvard Business Publishing]
• No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention [Penguin Press]
• Mindset: The New Psychology of Success [Random House Publishing Group]
• Lessons from Pixar 2: Failure Is an Ingredient for Creativity [Medium]
• Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella Apologizes For Comments On Women's Pay [Forbes]
• Microsoft's CEO Sent an Extraordinary Email to Employees After They Committed an Epic Fail [Inc]
• Satya Nadella at Microsoft: Instilling a Growth Mindset [Harvard Business Publishing]
• Managing High Reliability Organizations [California Management Review]
• Must accidents happen? Lessons from high-reliability organizations [Academy of Management Perspectives]
• The Opposite of Complacent: How Risky Businesses Avoid Disaster [Berkeley Haas Newsroom]
• Full Episode Transcript

Do you have a vexing question about work that you want Jenny and Sameer to answer? Submit your “Fixit Ticket!” 

Learn more about the podcast and the Berkeley Center for Workplace Culture and Innovation at www.haas.org/culture-kit.

*The Culture Kit with Jenny & Sameer is a production of UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business and the Berkeley Center for Workplace Culture and Innovation. It is produced by University FM.*

In this time of quiet quitting and burnout, how do organizational leaders create a culture that encourages workers to go above and beyond their job description?

Organizational culture experts Jenny Chatman and Sameer Srivastava are back to answer this question from Meili Hau, the director of the Student Health Center at San Francisco State University. Tune in to hear Jenny and Sameer share real-world insights and research as well as strategies you can put to work to improve your workplace culture.

Do you have a vexing question about work that you want Jenny and Sameer to answer? Submit your “Fixit Ticket!” 

Find the full transcript and learn more about the podcast at www.haas.org/culture-kit.

*The Culture Kit with Jenny & Sameer is a production of Haas School of Business and is produced by University FM.*

1. Codification – Codify your values and norms and systematically bake them into the fabric of your organization.
2. Opportunity – Set up systems and opportunities for people to not only document their work and share knowledge across boundaries, but also to form relationships and meaningful connections that span those boundaries.
3. Leadership – Leaders should reinforce the big picture, laying out a strong vision that inspires people to go above and beyond their job descriptions to achieve big goals together.

• Who is Quiet Quitting For? [The New York Times]
• The Berkeley-Haas School of Business: Codifying, Embedding, and Sustaining Culture Case Study A and B
• Berkeley Haas Defining Leadership Principles
• Where Culture Really Matters: Berkeley’s Haas School [Poets&Quants]
• How Stripe Built a Writing Culture
• Dean's Speaker Series | Patrick Collison, Co-Founder & CEO, Stripe; Co-Founder, Arc Institute
• The Hidden Power of Social Networks
• Enculturation Trajectories: Language, Cultural Adaptation, and Individual Outcomes in Organizations [Management Science]
• Organizational Commitment and Psychological Attachment: The Effects of Compliance, Identification, and Internalization on Prosocial Behavior [Journal of Applied Psychology]
• Full Episode Transcript

Do you have a vexing question about work that you want Jenny and Sameer to answer? Submit your “Fixit Ticket!” 

Learn more about the podcast and the Berkeley Center for Workplace Culture and Innovation at www.haas.org/culture-kit.

*The Culture Kit with Jenny & Sameer is a production of UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business and the Berkeley Center for Workplace Culture and Innovation. It is produced by University FM.*

Is it better for an organization to have one unified culture or a collection of mini ones? What are the benefits and drawbacks of each approach? 

Organizational culture experts Jenny Chatman and Sameer Srivastava are back with more research insights, real-world examples, and tips for company leaders, this time about the complex world of subcultures. 

Do you have a vexing question about work that you want Jenny and Sameer to answer? Submit your “Fixit Ticket!” 

Find the full transcript and learn more about the podcast at www.haas.org/culture-kit.

*Culture Kit with Jenny & Sameer is a production of Haas School of Business and is produced by University FM.*

1. Awareness – know what subcultures exist within the organization and anticipate the possibility that they conflict in dysfunctional ways.
2. Agility – be willing to try out different cultural priorities. Before deciding that the counterculture is necessarily problematic you should look at what it is solving for.
3. Alignment –  prioritize one cultural norm that applies to all units and unifies the organization rather than trying to be perfectly aligned on everything.

• The Role of Subcultures in Agile Organizations [Leading and Managing People in the Dynamic Organization]
• Maersk: Driving Culture Change at a Century-Old Company to Achieve Measurable Results [Berkeley Haas Case Series]
• Identifying Organizational Subcultures: An Empirical Approach [Journal of Management Studies]
• A Language-Based Method for Assessing Symbolic Boundaries [Sociological Methods & Research]
• The Lasting Leadership Lessons From The Challenger Disaster [Forbes]
• 5 Ways to Create a Culture of Innovation in Your Organisation [Salesforce Blog]
• Full Episode Transcript

Do you have a vexing question about work that you want Jenny and Sameer to answer? Submit your “Fixit Ticket!” 

Learn more about the podcast and the Berkeley Center for Workplace Culture and Innovation at www.haas.org/culture-kit.

*The Culture Kit with Jenny & Sameer is a production of UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business and the Berkeley Center for Workplace Culture and Innovation. It is produced by University FM.*

In this world of hybrid work, how to build and maintain long-lasting and impactful relationships at your company can be a head-scratcher of a question. 

The Culture Kit hosts, Jenny Chatman and Sameer Srivastava, are here to help. On today’s episode, they’re answering a question from HubSpot CEO Yamini Rangan about how to keep employees connected whether they’re at home or in the office.

Do you have a vexing question about work that you want Jenny and Sameer to answer? Submit your “Fixit Ticket!” at https://forms.gle/mxt7gBpRFqy4e52z5.

Find the full transcript and learn more about the podcast at: https://www.haas.org/culture-kit

1. Engage – connect people to the broader culture through meaningful shared experiences.
2. Expand – make those shared activities opportunities to broaden their networks within the organization.
3. Experiment – be open to new ways of creating connection, while also being willing to drop bad ideas and adjust over time.

• Our Work-from-Anywhere Future [Harvard Business Review]
• Work-from-anywhere: The productivity effects of geographic flexibility [Strategic Management Journal]
• The Future of WFH [2024 Culture Connect Conference slides – Nick Bloom]
• Does Working From Home Work? Evidence from a Chinese Experiment [NBER]
• The effects of remote work on collaboration among information workers [Nature Human Behavior]
• When choice is demotivating: Can one desire too much of a good thing? [Journal of Personality and Social Psychology]
• How to Build Your Network [Harvard Business Review]
• In the Changing Role of the Office, It’s All about Moments That Matter [Microsoft]
• How Working from Home Boosted Golf
• Case Study: How Visa taps into volunteering to keep its hybrid workforce engaged [TLNT]
• Is Commitment Getting Infected Too? How COVID-19 Stay-Home Orders Influence Workgroup Commitment
• The Ritual Effect
• Remote Work Revolution
• Full Episode Transcript

Do you have a vexing question about work that you want Jenny and Sameer to answer? Submit your “Fixit Ticket!” 

Learn more about the podcast and the Berkeley Center for Workplace Culture and Innovation at www.haas.org/culture-kit.

*The Culture Kit with Jenny & Sameer is a production of UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business and the Berkeley Center for Workplace Culture and Innovation. It is produced by University FM.*