How do leaders create a unified culture at their organizations that’s not only sustainable but propels growth and success?

Psychologist Jennifer A. Chatman and sociologist Glenn R. Carroll put their expertise on management and organizational behavior together in the new book, Making Organizational Culture Great: Moving Beyond Popular Beliefs. Chatman is Dean of the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley and Carroll is a professor of management at Stanford University.

On this episode, they join Greg to discuss how organizational culture research has evolved, valid methods for measuring culture within a firm, the defining characteristics of strong cultures, how culture and strategy are complements to each other, and practices for changing an organization’s culture. They also delve into case studies from existing organizations like Netflix, Genetech, and Berkeley Haas.

*unSILOed Podcast is produced by University FM.*

Episode Quotes:

Why great strategies fall

08:13: [Jenniffer Chatman] The problem has never been finding the right answer. The problem has been scaling it up through the entire organization so that you're actually delivering, right? I mean, you teach strategy. Strategy formulation is, there's theory and there are best practices, and you can develop a beautiful, elegant, distinctive strategy that takes into account all the dynamics that are going on currently. But if you can't implement that throughout the organization, it's not valuable. So culture is the other piece of that, which is how to cascade things through an organization that allows it to execute completely on a well-advised strategy.

Cultures form whether you design or not

54:29: [Jenniffer Chatman] No matter what you do or don't do, a culture will form. And if you're not intentional about it, the risk is that a culture forms that actually deviates significantly from what your true objectives are, and then, you're in trouble.

What makes a strong culture?

11:56: [Glenn Glenn Carrol] Strong culture is the combination of high intensity by individuals, which means they really care about what goes on, and they will go out of their way to correct people if they think you're doing it wrong. So that kind of intensity, coupled with homogeneity or agreement among people in the organization about what should be done. And so when you have both high intensity and high agreement, you have what we call a strong culture. Now, the content of the culture is the actual substance of the rituals, beliefs, practices, and you can find, by our definition, strong culture organizations that run the gamut from business organizations to religious organizations to cults to terrorist cells, you name it. So around any content, you can pretty much produce a strong culture.

Show Links:

Recommended Resources:

“Corporate culture: Evidence from the field”, 2022, Journal of Financial Economics
Benjamin E. Hermalin
“People and Organizational Culture: A Profile Comparison Approach to Assessing Person-Organization Fit”, 1991, Academy of Management Journal
No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention by Reed Hastings
Clifford Geertz
Bronisław Malinowski
Genentech

Guest Profiles:

Jennifer Chatman Dean Profile at UC Berkeley
Jennifer Chatman Professional Website
Jennifer Chatman LinkedIn Profile
Glenn Carroll Faculty Profile at Stanford University
Glenn Carroll LinkedIn Profile

Guest Work:

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668. Decoding Culture’s Role in Strategy and Success with Jennifer A. Chatman and Glenn R. Carroll

unSILOed with Greg LaBlanc

668. Decoding Culture’s Role in Strategy and Success with Jennifer A. Chatman and Glenn R. Carroll