CultureLab with Aga Bajer

The world’s top leadership and culture whisperers - Frances Frei and Anne Morris joined me for a fun, wide-ranging, and insightful conversation about how you can unleash your team’s potential. Frances and Anne talk about redefining leadership, the relationship of culture and strategy, love and trust in the workplace, their experience working with Uber, WeWork and Riot Games, and much more.  To join CultureBrained® go to tinyurl.com/culturebrained To access our free resources and materials on cultivating thriving cultures, click here: https://www.agabajer.com/resources/

Growth. We all crave it. Both in our personal lives and in business. But what we often forget is that the biggest growth spurts inevitably come with growing pains. Suddenly we are in this weird place in the middle - no longer a child but still not an adult. Adolescence: something’s emerging, everything is changing and it’s really, really messy. Turns out that startups go through a very similar stage. And this is exactly what my guest today and I talk about in this episode of the CultureLab podcast.  To join CultureBrained® go to tinyurl.com/culturebrained To access our free resources and materials on cultivating thriving cultures, click here: https://www.agabajer.com/resources/

My guest today, Dorie Clark, suggests we need to make things easier for ourselves in 2021 and embrace the lowercase "r" reinvention: small, subtle changes that, over time, compound and often produce major transformations. But to achieve such impressive results over time, we need to develop a "reinvention habit."  And this is exactly what we talk about in this episode of the CultureLab podcast. I can't think of a better way to ease ourselves into 2021.  To join CultureBrained® go to tinyurl.com/culturebrained To access our free resources and materials on cultivating thriving cultures, click here: https://www.agabajer.com/resources/

"I hate this company,” I said to myself, sitting in the office in San Francisco. “I can’t believe I created this.” This is how my guest today, Darius Mirshahzadeh, opens his book, The Core Value Equation. Darius had been successful by any external measure. He was the founder and CEO of a company that would soon hit the $10,000,000 revenue mark. He had 150 employees and a seventeen-thousand-square-foot modern tech office space in the heart of San Francisco’s SOMA district. And yet, he had serious regrets as a founder. He realized that the company he created was not the one he intended to. Somehow, while trying to build a successful business, he lost track of what he now considers one of the most important factors to achieve success and grow with minimum growing pains - the core values.  And core values are what we are focusing on in this episode.  To join CultureBrained® go to tinyurl.com/culturebrained To access our free resources and materials on cultivating thriving cultures, click here: https://www.agabajer.com/resources/

What does a successful startup founder look like?  You probably have a vivid picture in your head – two supercharged recent college graduates bursting out of the gate with a fresh new idea that hits them like a lightning bolt, gets massive funding, and leads to a product launch that is an astounding success.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  My guest today is Ethan Mollick, an award-winning researcher at Wharton and the author of a new book, THE UNICORN’S SHADOW: Combating the Dangerous Myths that Hold Back Startups, Founders, and Investors.  His mission is to democratize entrepreneurship.  In this wide-ranging conversation, we talk about what's a myth and what is true in the world of startups.  To join CultureBrained® go to tinyurl.com/culturebrained To access our free resources and materials on cultivating thriving cultures, click here: https://www.agabajer.com/resources/

Today, my guest is the co-founder and CEO of X4 Group, Peter Rabey. Peter and his team managed to scale and grow their business through extremely challenging times. Since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, X4 Group has realigned the entire business strategy to avoid layoffs. The reboot went so well that their business - and headcount - grew by over 50% since June. Tune in to this wide-ranging conversation about scaling through the pandemic, hiring, onboarding, cultivating a healthy culture, and more! To join CultureBrained® go to tinyurl.com/culturebrained To access our free resources and materials on cultivating thriving cultures, click here: https://www.agabajer.com/resources/

Wendy Smith is an associate professor of organizational behavior at the Alfred Lerner School of Business at the University of Delaware. She earned her PhD in organizational behavior at Harvard Business School, and she researches a really interesting area - strategic paradoxes. For the interview with Professor Smith, click here. To be the first to receive the new audio postcards, please click here. To join CultureBrained® go to tinyurl.com/culturebrained To access our free resources and materials on cultivating thriving cultures, click here: https://www.agabajer.com/resources/

To say that 2020 has been a challenging year would be an understatement. But there are many ways to look at our struggles and Bobby Herrera, the founder and CEO of Populus Group, suggests that we choose to see them as a gift. In this wide-ranging conversation, Bobby and I talk about his entrepreneurial journey and the culture he is committed to cultivating in his company.  To join CultureBrained® go to tinyurl.com/culturebrained To access our free resources and materials on cultivating thriving cultures, click here: https://www.agabajer.com/resources/

Dr Max McKeown is a visionary, and influential presenter who reveals insider knowledge, gleaned from twenty-five years’ experience consulting for Pfizer, Topshop and Sony, amongst many other major global brands. In this conversation, we talk about how to find your next big idea, what role strategy plays in your ability to create the future you want and what scenarios could emerge if culture and strategy really sat down to have breakfast together instead of trying to cannibalize each other. 

Garry Ridge is the President and Chief Executive Officer of the WD-40 Company, a billion-dollar business with a 93% employee engagement index. WD-40 has been making history when it comes to harnessing the power of organizational culture. It has kept its values aligned for over six decades by making them the heart and soul of the company. On its culture homepage, WD-40 has the following message for job applicants: "Please consider employment with WD-40 Company only if you feel as strongly about our values as we do." Here's a message from Garry on how to navigate this difficult period. For the interview with Garry, click here: https://www.agabajer.com/podcast-list... To be the first to receive the new audio postcards, please click here: https://mailchi.mp/eafee17fef25/audio...