How To Avoid Creating a ‘Yes Man’ Culture

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.*

Jenny & Sameer’s 3 Main Takeaways:

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.

Show Links:

• 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.*