The office has never been just a place to work, it both reflects and shapes an organization’s culture. The furniture, the light, the layout, the ratio of private to shared space—all of it sends signals, whether leaders intend them to or not. 

Paul Cooper and Christopher Good have spent their careers translating between what organizations say they value and what their spaces actually communicate. Paul is a principal at the architecture firm, TEF Design, and has spent 30 years designing places where people come together. Christopher is Chief Creative Officer at One Workplace, a workplace design and furnishings company, with the philosophy that no one should have to come into an office by default anymore, the office needs to earn it.  

On this episode, Paul and Christopher join organizational culture experts Jenny Chatman and Sameer Srivastava to discuss what offices should look like now in the age of remote and hybrid models, why rents in one AI-centric San Francisco neighborhood have doubled why downtown office space sits empty, and the unknowns of designing for the future as AI takes off. 

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

Read the full transcript of "The Office Has to Earn It: How Physical Space Shapes Organizational Culture."

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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Culture doesn’t just shape behavior; it shapes the emotional states people value. Those values operate largely below the surface and can drive some of the most consequential decisions organizations make—who gets hired, who gets promoted, who looks like a leader, and increasingly, how we design AI.

For 30 years, psychologist Jeanne Tsai, the Dunlevie Family Professor at Stanford University and director of the Stanford Culture and Emotion Lab, has been building the science of how culture shapes emotion and its implications for decision-making, health, and how people are perceived. She joins organizational culture experts Jenny Chatman and Sameer Srivastava to discuss why it’s important for leaders to understand and examine this unwritten standard for how employees feel at work.

Read the full transcript on The Culture Kit website.

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

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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We tend to treat organizational structures—such as job titles, departments, and reporting lines—like furniture: always there, moved around a bit, but rarely questioned. But what if AI is about to redesign the whole office? And in a world where you have humans and agents working alongside each other, how can leaders build a cohesive culture? 

Stanford professor Melissa Valentine anticipated some of these changes in her book, Flash Teams: Leading the Future of AI-Enhanced, On-Demand Work. In this episode of The Culture Kit, Melissa joined organizational culture experts Jenny Chatman and Sameer Srivastava to discuss how AI and online labor markets are enabling leaders to assemble teams, solve problems, and then disband at superhero speeds. They also explore tensions between algorithmic decision-making and human structures, the challenges of deploying AI agents alongside humans, and how to recognize the “invisible labor” that keeps everything running smoothly.

Melissa is an associate professor of management science & engineering at Stanford University and a senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI.

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

Read the full transcript of "Melissa Valentine on Assembling Your ‘Avengers’: Flash Teams in the Age of AI."

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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Most organizations say they want to foster creativity. But decades of research by Jack Goncalo, PhD 04, reveals they misunderstand it in fundamental ways: Leaders often implicitly reject novel ideas and penalize creative people when they’re up for leadership roles. 

In our Season 5 kickoff, Goncalo unpacks the science behind why—and shares some genuinely counterintuitive findings: the conditions we think suppress creativity sometimes do the opposite. And the costs of creative work? They show up in places no one is tracking—including what your employees might eat and drink after a big brainstorm.

Goncalo joins organizational culture experts Jenny Chatman and Sameer Srivastava to discuss why the bias against creativity is worst precisely when organizations need it most, why constraints and even social rejection can actually fuel original thinking, and why asking people to be creative all day has downstream consequences leaders aren't accounting for.

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

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.

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.*

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

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.

With the majority of our waking life spent at work, conversations around mental health are crucial for a healthy workplace culture. But how do you open the conversation at work? How can leaders build the trust and psychological safety needed for these conversations? 

On this special episode, David Ko, CEO of the sleep and meditation app Calm and author of the book Recharge, shares his leadership journey from investment banking to purpose-driven leadership. Since 2022, he’s guided Calm’s work in over 190 countries, supporting millions of people seeking to improve their wellbeing.

Ko describes “the battery check,” a simple framework for starting conversations about mental health, describes how burnout happens when leaders don’t explain the “why” behind decisions, and shares some candid personal anecdotes.

The conversation is hosted by Professor Sameer Srivastava and led by UC Berkeley Haas students Avanika Lal and Esa Tilija, both MBA 26. The joint Dean’s Speaker Series and Berkeley Center for Workplace Culture and Innovation event took place at the Haas School of Business on September 30, 2025. 

1. Make mental health conversations accessible: Ask "How's your battery?" instead of "How's your mental health?" This simple reframing normalizes discussions that are otherwise difficult to start, creating psychological safety for your team.

2. Stop stacking, start subtracting: Burnout happens when leaders keep adding priorities without removing anything or explaining why. When assigning new work, identify what employees should stop doing. Help them understand the "why" to create shared purpose, not just more tasks.

3. Listen first, talk last: Be a "Chief Listening Officer" rather than the first voice in the room. Foster open dialogue where employees feel comfortable challenging ideas and speaking up. 

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.*

• Recharge: Boosting Your Mental Battery, One Conversation at a Time by David Ko
• The Recharge Podcast
• National Alliance of Mental Illness (NAMI)
• UC Berkeley Haas Dean’s Speaker Series

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.

Think your workplace runs on pure merit? Think again. In this season-opening episode, Berkeley Haas professor and leading sociologist Toby Stuart reveals how hidden status dynamics shape whose ideas get heard, who advances, and why meritocracies might be a “nice myth to think about” but nearly impossible to achieve in practice. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try.

 Stuart, author of the new book Anointed: The Extraordinary Effects of Social Status in a Winner-Take-Most World, joins organizational culture experts Jenny Chatman and Sameer Srivastava to explore how social status quietly drives decisions, what functions it serves in organizations and society, and how leaders can navigate—and reshape—these hidden hierarchies. 

1. No matter how hard they’ve worked to get where they are, leaders should recognize that only part of their status was truly earned. Act with humility, acknowledge the roles that other people have played, and generously share pass along the status you hold.

• Anointed: The Extraordinary Effects of Social Status in a Winner Take Most World, By Toby Stuart
• "AI will bring back the old boys’ club", By Toby Stuart, Boston Globe/Haas News, July 27, 2025
• "Could AI Destroy the Value of an Elite Education?", By Toby Stuart, U.S. News, August 27, 2025“
• The Philosophical Bet We All Need to Make in the Age of AI”, by Toby Stuart, Time, Sept. 29, 2025
• "The Matthew Effect in Science,” By Robert Merton, Science, 1968
• “Orchestrating Impartiality: The Impact of "Blind" Auditions on Female Musicians”, By Claudia Goldin, American Economic Review, 2004.

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.

With so many shifting rules and cultural norms, career success can feel like mastering a complex game.

Jessica Lindl, Vice President of Ecosystem Growth at Unity Technologies and a Haas MBA alum, shows how a gaming mindset can be an advantage in today’s workplace.

Her new book, The Career Game Loop: Learn to Earn in the New Economy, launches April 29.  

Jessica joins hosts Jenny Chatman and Sameer Srivastava in the season 3 finale of The Culture Kit to discuss the gamer mindset, strategies for job crafting, and how leaders can build game-inspired workplace cultures. 

1. Embrace chaos and uncertainty: Learn how to find opportunity in  moments of change.
2. Build durable skills: As AI integrates into the workforce, it’s more important than ever to have durable skills such as problem-solving and collaboration that make you a fundamental asset to your organization.
3. Look for opportunities to job craft and continually evolve your role: This can spur innovation at the company as well as new opportunities in your career.

• Pre-order link for The Career Game Loop: Learn to Earn in the New Economy
• Jessica Lindl on LinkedIn
• View the full transcript of this episode.

For more information about this podcast and a full written transcript, please see http: haas.org/culture-kit.

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

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.