075. Charlie Sull: What It Takes to Build a Remarkable Culture - Learnings From the World’s Largest Culture Study

Leading Transformational Change with Tobias Sturesson

What constitutes a remarkably healthy culture and a workplace people love being a part of? What about your culture might instead make people frustrated and leave your organization?

Two critical questions that every leader needs to ask.

While we face an economic downturn, the job market is still competitive, especially for highly skilled talent. And we all want to be known for building great organizational cultures.

So what can leaders do?

Charlie and Don Sull, researchers at MIT and co-founders of Culture X, have conducted the largest systematic study of corporate culture ever, analyzing 1.4 million Glassdoor reviews from more than 500 of the largest employers in the United States.

They found that toxic culture is the primary driver of resignations. And that even relatively healthy cultures can have toxic elements that must be addressed. They learned that culture can't be adequately measured using only quantitative measures - like employee engagement surveys. And that the most important elements of stand-out cultures are listening to employees and building psychological safety.

On the first episode of Season 8 of the Leading Transformational Change Podcast, we bring you a conversation with Charlie Sull.

Charlie's thought leadership has been featured in the Economist, Harvard Business Review, MIT Sloan Management Review, and more.

I hope you will find our conversation as insightful, inspiring, and thought-provoking as I did!