On this special episode, Sameer turns the tables on Jenny and puts her in the guest chair to talk about the new book she wrote with Stanford Professor Glenn Carroll – Making Organizational Culture Great: Moving Beyond Popular Beliefs, out April 2026.

Based on decades of research, Glenn and Jenny’s book takes on the myths, clichés, and wishful thinking about organizational culture and replaces them with what works. In this interview, they give Sameer a sneak preview of some of the top tips in the book and how leaders can start building a great organizational culture today.

Learn more about The Culture Kit and find the full transcript: https://haas.berkeley.edu/culture/culture-kit-podcast/

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

1. Get a spreadsheet: Be deliberate and serious about culture: treat culture like anything else in your organization that you prioritize. That means tracking!
2. Don’t start and end with announcing your values: Be consistent and comprehensive in the changes you make in an organization. Embed cultural values into every process your organization has.
3. Be aware that culture can change: Be willing to continually drive it and cultivate it into the kind of culture you’re hoping for. Be patient and don’t expect overnight success.
4. The science is easy to understand, but executing is hard. Understand the science to operate from a position of confidence.

• Making Organizational Culture Great: Moving Beyond Popular Beliefs by Jennifer Chatman and Glenn Carroll (April 2026)
• Glenn Carroll’s Stanford faculty profile
• Glenn Carroll’s personal website
• Jenny Chatman’s UC Berkeley Haas faculty profile
• Jenny Chatman’s personal website
• Parsing organizational culture: How the norm for adaptability influences the relationship between culture consensus and financial performance in high-technology firms
• Fitting In or Standing Out? The Tradeoffs of Structural and Cultural Embeddedness,
• Making Great Strategy: Arguing for Organizational Advantage
• Stop Hiring for “Cultural Fit”

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.*

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Should you bring your “whole self” to work? Why does authenticity matter for organizations? And what does being “authentic” even mean?

On this episode of The Culture Kit, Jenny and Sameer sit down with their colleague Erica Bailey, whose research is changing how we think about authenticity and leadership. Bailey, an assistant professor in the Management of Organizations Group at UC Berkeley Haas, talks about why she began studying authenticity, generational differences in attitudes about authenticity at work, and how we might preserve our human value in the age of AI.

Learn more about The Culture Kit and find the full transcript: https://haas.berkeley.edu/culture/culture-kit-podcast/

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

1. Focus on your own authenticity and less on convincing others: Most people’s perception of your authenticity has more to do with their own preconceived notions and less about who you really are. Spend more energy on learning about who you are, at work and in your relationships.
2. Leaders should seek to create a respectful environment:yLeaders foster authenticity in others by valuing their contributions and setting norms of genuine respect and engagement—rather than mandating people to be “authentic” with their managers.
3. Find authentic peer relationships: Authenticity is best nurtured through trusted, horizontal relationships at work. Find peers who earn and nurture your vulnerability and meet you with authenticity in return.

• Erica’s website: http://ericarbailey.com/
• “The preeminence of communality in the leadership preferences of followers,” By Rebecca Ponce de Leon and Erica Bailey, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2025: https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2025-76072-001
• “What do workers really want in a leader?” By Erica Bailey, Haas News: https://newsroom.haas.berkeley.edu/research/what-do-workers-really-want-in-a-leader-new-study-challenges-stereotypes/
• “Positive—More than unbiased—Self-perceptions increase subjective authenticity.” By Erica Bailey and Sheena Iyengar, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2023: https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2024-18545-001?doi=1

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.*

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

It doesn’t matter where you work—bad meetings are a universal pain point. But they don’t have to be.

Rebecca Hinds is an organizational researcher who has spent the past 15 years helping teams fix their broken meetings—and broken collaboration in general. Hinds has applied her Stanford PhD to the future of work, founding think tanks at two technology companies, and is now the author of the forthcoming book, Your Best Meeting Ever: Seven Principles for Designing Meetings That Get Things Done, out February 2026.

Hinds joins organizational culture experts Jenny Chatman and Sameer Srivastava to discuss how bad meetings can degrade your company’s culture, the purpose meetings should actually serve, and how to start treating meetings as your most valuable product—and not an inevitable headache.

Learn more about The Culture Kit and find the full transcript: https://haas.berkeley.edu/culture/culture-kit-podcast/

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

1. Hold a “meeting doomsday” once a year—ancel every recurring meeting from employees’ calendars for 48 hours and then add meetings in a way that is effective and essential for the current state of business.
2. Get your communication system in order—Get everyone on the same page about where official communication takes place and what information they can rely on. This will help people evaluate when and whether a meeting should be called.
3. Use AI–When it comes to diagnosing dysfunction in meetings and creating equilibrium in contributions, AI can be your best friend.

• Rebecca Hinds’ website: https://www.rebeccahinds.com/
• Your Best Meeting Ever: 7 Principles for Designing Meetings that Get Things Done: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Your-Best-Meeting-Ever/Rebecca-Hinds/9781668067482 (launching February 3, 2025)
• The Simple Sabotage Field Manual: https://www.cia.gov/static/5c875f3ec660e092cf893f60b4a288df/SimpleSabotage.pdf
• Meeting Doomsday / Meeting Overload is a Fixable Problem (Harvard Business Review): https://hbr.org/2022/10/meeting-overload-is-a-fixable-problem
• The Collaboration Cleanse / Are Collaboration Tools Overwhelming Your Team (Harvard Business Review): https://hbr.org/2023/08/are-collaboration-tools-overwhelming-your-team
• The Hidden Toll of Meeting Hangovers (Harvard Business Review): https://hbr.org/2025/02/the-hidden-toll-of-meeting-hangovers

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.*

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.