Culture beyond 1930 surveys: The Rise of AI and Culture Intelligence – Charlie Sull

[00:00:00] Nena Dimovska: Welcome to People Pulse, the podcast where we explore the dynamic intersection of HR, culture and innovation. I’m Nena Dimovska, your host, and today we’ll dive deep into the world of corporate culture with none other than Charlie Sull. Charlie is a globally established expert in corporate culture and co founder of CultureX.

[00:00:23] Nena Dimovska: His work, including the Measuring Culture series in MIT Sloan Management Review, reaches millions and helps redefine how companies measure and enhance their culture. In today’s episode, we’ll uncover insights on people and culture intelligence, build positive workplace cultures, use technology for culture measurement, address toxic behavior and much more.

[00:00:46] Nena Dimovska: Okay. So let’s dive in. So Charlie, who do you think would be responsible to be driving this culture transformation? You mentioned that the top leadership buy in is critical. But who do you think should be driving this forward?

[00:01:01] Charlie Sull: Yeah. So the the model we recommend for effective cultural management is quite simple. So you need a couple of things. You need high quality cultural data, which we can talk about, but most companies already have that. You need an effective culture AI platform, which most companies don’t have there.

[00:01:20] Charlie Sull: They’re using this, you know, long 1932 survey. Then you need what we call this position of the cultural owner within the company. So this is a very important position. So this is the liaison between the cultural data and AI platform and executive leadership. So for a person with this role, you need kind of a mixture of quantitative savvy- because you’re going to be dealing with a ton of numbers.

[00:01:48] Charlie Sull: This, you know, these culture AI platforms just spit out a lot of numbers. And you’re also going to need some qualitative understanding of the thought leadership behind how culture works. It’s just going to be difficult to make sense of things if you don’t have that. You’re going to need strong data storytelling skills because basically all of your job is taking all this data, turning it into stories that you can then tell to executive leadership and you’re going to need strong senior stakeholder relationship management skills, because a lot of the job is going to be you know, under understanding what, you know, the CFOs priorities are and how to please him or her.

[00:02:28] Charlie Sull: And and then finally, you need a direct line of communication. It is vital that this is direct line of communication. It can’t be mediated through all these different levels of HR and all these different people. With executive leadership, ideally the CEO, him or herself. So if you have that direct line of communication, someone competent analyzing the AI platform and reporting these narratives back to executive leadership. And then the final piece of the puzzle, of course, is this will. If you have a leadership who actually prioritizes this and, you know, listens to these insights that they’re receiving and takes them seriously. Then if it’s a competence in your leadership, they’re going to figure it out and the exact ways they figure this out, you know, what they delegate to HR, what they delegate to, you know, the VPs of HR, what they delegate to people analytics, what they delegate to, you know, different parts of the organization. The exact solutions are going to vary depending on you know, a million different things within the company.

[00:03:27] Charlie Sull: But if you have this essential dynamic, if you have strong data, if you have a strong AI platform to measure it. If you have a talented culture owner that’s giving high quality insights to the CEO and if the CEO and the top team are bought in and if everyone’s reasonably competent, then the rest is details. They’ll figure it out. They’ll figure it out. So that’s what we’d recommend is the backbone of a cultural management model. And then the exact details, you know, what role does HR play? That’s going to vary in every company. But if you have a strong executive leadership that’s bought in and that’s taking this problem seriously- they’ll figure out details like that.

[00:04:06] Nena Dimovska: So it’s, it seems that you’re saying that the foundation of it is a strong, AI enabled platform or technology. I would just like to hear your viewpoint on, you know, what’s the future of culture in organizations that’s shaped in a way by, by AI. You know, how can managers prepare to integrate these tools in a ways that protect and even enhance the the culture integrity that their companies have while at the same time staying competitive in this AI driven landscape?

[00:04:39] Charlie Sull: Yeah, I think it’s, it’s not so much a technology challenge. I mean, the technology is largely already there and it’s just going to get better. I mean, basically what you’re trying to do with this is just employee listening, voice of the employee, understanding what employees say across hundreds of different cultural topics.

[00:04:58] Charlie Sull: That’s relatively low hanging fruit for, you know, a good large language model. Like this is already a fairly solved problem from a technological standpoint. What’s really going to determine the overall state of culture and whether culture improves across the, world isn’t so much it advances in the technology.

[00:05:18] Charlie Sull: It’s whether leadership becomes bought into the idea that culture matters and whether they begin really taking this seriously and they start to think of this, you know, they make the mental shift from culture as this, you know, like amorphous abstract thing that can mean a million different things not grounded in evidence, to culture as: Oh, wow, this is probably my company’s single biggest asset. What are the most effective ways that we can manage it? And part of that again involves making this shift from culture as abstract to concrete. And measurable. So really, and you know, that’s what I spend a lot of my time doing.

[00:05:57] Charlie Sull: It’s not so much talking about the technology. It’s talking about, you know, why culture is important, what culture is exactly and trying to get this leadership behind. Because the reality is, you know, you look at the people who are calling the shots today, the CEOs there, you know, they’re 55 years old, 65 years old, maybe.

[00:06:15] Charlie Sull: When they went to business school, that was, you know, 30 years ago, 40 years ago.

[00:06:21] Charlie Sull: And in business school, they weren’t taught anything about culture, really. I mean, even now there are very few classes taught about culture at business school. So they weren’t taught, you know, what culture is. They weren’t taught why culture matters. They weren’t taught, you know, how to improve culture.

[00:06:37] Charlie Sull: If they did learn these things, and quite a few of them have they kind of had to pick it up as, as they went about their career. So what we’re trying to provide, me and my co-founder, Don, is this kind of, you know, extracurricular education that they missed in business school, but that they should have learned in business school- which is: Hey here’s, what culture actually is.

[00:06:58] Charlie Sull: It’s not all this, you know, nonsense. It’s really grounded in evidence. It’s really the scientific thing. And it’s incredibly important and you can measure it and you can and you can change it. So I think really, you know, they’re, they’re a small group of people. It’s not just me and my co-founder, a couple other people too who are pushing for this narrative to catch on amongst business leaders.

[00:07:19] Charlie Sull: And if it does, then the culture is really going to improve. And if it doesn’t, you can have the best technology in the world, but if you don’t have will, the culture is not going to improve that much.

[00:07:28] Nena Dimovska: Well, well said. Well said. So let’s say we have the buy-in from top leadership, right? We have these growth mindset C-level executives and they are willing to make the change. Perhaps the next step will be also to get the buy-in from the middle managers, right? I think, it’s safe to say that mid level managers are very important too also in shaping the workplace culture. But it’s also safe to say that they’re often pulled in so many directions and, you know, just, it’s hard for, for them to focus on the managerial role only. How do you think that technology can help them support their efforts and empower their teams, to take ownership, make better decisions and ultimately drive this culture transformation?

[00:08:19] Nena Dimovska: Well that’s the nice thing about using this listening approach where everything’s based around listening. So, I mean, I guess from what I’ve been saying, it might sound like everything comes from the top down. That’s not exactly what I mean. I mean, the single most important piece you need is top team prioritization because they have access to all the levers.

[00:08:38] Nena Dimovska: But really, the insights with which you change the culture are all coming from below and from the middle. So the the decisions that executive leadership is making to change the culture are all coming from what the middle management and what the frontline employees said.

[00:08:57] Nena Dimovska: So, if that’s your dynamic. Then… and I’ve seen this, you know, a hundred times with successful you know, culture engagements.

[00:09:05] Nena Dimovska: Then, the executive leadership can go back to the middle management and say: Okay, here’s what we’re focusing on. But we’re not, this isn’t just, you know, an edict from heaven. The reason we’re focusing on this is because this is exactly what the company said.

[00:09:20] Charlie Sull: And then again, you can quantify it. You can say: this is how often employees speak about it. This is how they speak about it compared to other companies. This is how they’re speaking about it in your specific part of the company.

[00:09:31] Charlie Sull: And when you show that employee voice back to the employees, then it becomes much easier to get buy-in.

[00:09:37] Charlie Sull: And then they feel like they have ownership of the cultural change process.

[00:09:42] Charlie Sull: And once they feel that sense of ownership, then it becomes a lot easier. So really, that’s a great point. Of course, middle management buy-in is also essential to culture change as is frontline employee buy-in, frankly. But in, at least in my experience, I found that’s always the easiest part because the reason you’re making these changes in the first place is because middle management and frontline employees are saying to do this.

[00:10:07] Charlie Sull: So they’re, naturally going to want to be on board.

[00:10:11] Nena Dimovska: Thank you. So what we previously briefly touched base upon is that the traditional way of communicating is inappropriate.

[00:10:21] Nena Dimovska: Let’s say inconsistently applied or even we can say at times too vague. And this also goes for, the most challenging communication across organizations we can agree- giving feedback, right? With the rise of AI power tools, how do you see the technology enabling more constructive, personalized, data driven, right, feedback conversations? And what challenges do you think that managers should be aware of?

[00:10:51] Charlie Sull: Well, I think there are two dynamics. So one is the dynamic between the manager and the employee. My point of view on this is a) I shouldn’t change that much because these conversations shouldn’t be mediated too much by technology. These should just be direct conversations that you’re having on a regular basis with your direct reports where you can have natural human communication.

[00:11:14] Charlie Sull: And really, you don’t need that much of a technology solution to make conversations like these better. But the second dynamic is between employees and leadership. When you have, you know, hundreds or thousands or tens of thousands of employees. And in that case, you really do need technology because it’s impossible to make sense of all these voices if you don’t have technology. And the role of AI is completely transformational here, because before, if you go to, you know, 99 out of 100 companies, if they do have some way of making sense of all this employee feedback from thousands of employees.

[00:11:50] Charlie Sull: It’s going to be through this survey that was designed in 1932. It’s this Likert scale survey. One to five. I agree. I agree. I agree. And you get low quality insights versus with AI you now get high quality insights. So that’s the fundamental transformation. And that’s why I think you know, this has the potential to be so cool.

[00:12:09] Charlie Sull: You know, for the first time in history you now are able to understand what employees are saying at scale. With high fidelity, you can understand what their problems actually are. If you’re, you know, a good leader, you can actually solve their problems a lot better. You can understand your strengths and challenges, you know, how to address your cultural challenges.

[00:12:27] Charlie Sull: You can make your culture better. And that’s, that’s why I think even if it sounds very technical, like this, you know, jump between Likert scale surveys and AI surveys, it actually has the potential to do these very cool transformations that make millions of people’s lives better and also create more economic value.

[00:12:48] Nena Dimovska: What you’re saying is that the culture is a solvable challenge, right? How can companies ensure that they’re not just solving the surface level issues, but they’re really driving long term cultural transformation? What advice would you give to managers? How, how to start what battles to pick?

[00:13:07] Charlie Sull: I mean, I’d say even if you’re just solving the surface level challenges, that’s some progress. That’s more than most companies do. Yeah, I mean, my advice, I think I’ve already said it. Basically, if you want to improve a culture, it’s very, very simple. You need two things. You need will, top team prioritization, and you need knowledge.

[00:13:24] Charlie Sull: You need an effective AI cultural measurement system. This traditional 1932, 1 to 5 point scale system is not going to tell you what your culture is. So if you have both of these pieces, if you have will and if you have knowledge, your culture will improve. So in terms of first steps, I’d recommend investing in, you know, a cheap taster of a culture AI platform and getting a read of your culture, maybe using an external employee review platform like Indeed or Glassdoor.

[00:13:54] Charlie Sull: And then you can go to your senior leadership and say: Hey, look, we have real, real cultural challenges or our culture is great, but there’s still ways to improve it. So then you get will. And then if you have top team prioritization about actually improving the culture. Then the next step is investing further in this cultural management model that I was talking about, where you want a sophisticated culture AI platform, you want good data, you want to have someone talented in this role of culture owner, and you want to have a direct line of communication between the culture owner and the CEO.

[00:14:28] Charlie Sull: And I guarantee you, if you have all of those things. If you have the will, if you have the knowledge, if you have that kind of model your culture will improve and your culture will improve significantly in a short amount of time. And if you’re missing any of those things, your culture probably will not improve that much.

[00:14:46] Nena Dimovska: Well said. So looking at the next decade, how do you see AI changing the way organizations approach culture?

[00:14:56] Charlie Sull: It depends because, again, for me, it’s not so much a technological thing that the cultural measurement technologies is already there. It’s, it’s more of a leadership mindset shift. So if leaders do buy into this idea that culture matters and they do prioritize solving it, then the technology is going to play a vital role. Because you won’t have this whole industry of all these crappy one to five point scale surveys that’ll all go extinct and instead you’ll have culture AI, which can actually do a good job of this question and tell you effective ways to improve your culture. And then you’ll also have a leadership prioritizing the culture.

[00:15:31] Charlie Sull: So it’ll be great. The culture will dramatically improve. Right now the average culture rating on Glassdoor is about 3.5. If this really takes off, if effective cultural management really takes off and leaders are bought into it and they have the technology, then you can see that dramatically improving.

[00:15:48] Charlie Sull: It wouldn’t surprise me if it really took off to see the average culture rating improved from 3.5 to, you know, 4.0. Some dramatic transformation like that is possible. But if you don’t have the transfer, if you don’t have the leadership buy in, then I see a much more, gray vision for how AI is gonna affect HR and culture.

[00:16:10] Charlie Sull: I mean, it looks right now, if you’re reading the news, the big thing in HR technology isn’t cultural management. It’s all these Agentic you know, AI bots, that are going to, you know, take onboarding and remove the human element from it and take you know, talent attraction and remove the human element from it.

[00:16:31] Charlie Sull: And it’s all about cost reduction. It’s all about efficiency. It’s all about layoffs. I don’t think it’s very exciting. And I think it’s actually going to probably makes the culture worse. Because before, you know take onboarding for instance. You know, onboarding isn’t just this process to be ruthlessly streamlined with AI technology.

[00:16:51] Charlie Sull: It’s this vital way that new employees learn what the culture is, you know, what values are smiled upon, what values are frowned upon, what they should do, how they should behave culturally. So I think unless leaders really buy into this idea that culture matters and that is this important asset that you should manage. If they don’t do that, and if things continue, basically, like they basically are now. You’ll see this very dark future where AI is basically, you know, the role AI is playing is just replacing human jobs and laying people off.

[00:17:23] Charlie Sull: And it’s actually going to make the culture worse. So it really just all depends on whether leadership is bought into the idea of culture because the technology is already there either way.

[00:17:34] Nena Dimovska: Interesting. I was about to ask you that I read, I think it was just your recent LinkedIn posts. It was just from few days ago where you expressed your concern about the agentic AI and automating some of the HR processes that you’ve just mentioned. But, you know, I think that train has left the station.

[00:17:52] Nena Dimovska: I mean, these agentic AI tools are, some of them are already out there. Now it’s just a matter of how they’re going to be integrated into the way we work and where we’ll be the human in the loop and how human and machines are going to work together and what will that mean for the culture in the, organization. And with all of these complexities a future with so many changes and unknown variables, what’s your advice to leaders? Like what’s one piece of advice that you would like to close with about culture, technology, and, you know, where to start in 2025?

[00:18:31] Charlie Sull: I guess, I mean, in terms of what I haven’t already covered. Maybe I’ll end with some analysis we did recently where we took a sample of 3.6 million Glassdoor employees. The free text of what they wrote and we looked at assessments of each company’s culture just when they, when they would speak, say things like the culture here is good.

[00:18:53] Charlie Sull: The culture is bad. The work environment is good. Just general assessments of culture. Which companies spoke about that the most positively and the most negatively compared to their industry. And we took that cultural dimension of just general mentions of culture and then we looked across hundreds of different topics.

[00:19:13] Charlie Sull: To see what strong mentions of culture were most strongly correlated with. So when employees speak positively about the culture, they’re also speaking positively about this thing and vice versa. And the number 1, highest thing that a strong culture was correlated with, was caring about employees.

[00:19:36] Charlie Sull: So when employees say the culture is strong they’re very likely to say that the company cares about them. The company makes them feel like they’re they’re being cared about.

[00:19:46] Charlie Sull: And conversely when employees say that the culture is weak they’re also very likely to say that the company does not care about them.

[00:19:56] Charlie Sull: So my advice to leadership as kind of a bigger note: if you’re trying to improve your culture, I mean, obviously, you know, the rest of the stuff I talked about adopting the technology is also very important, but maybe the 1st step is just asking yourself, you know, do I care about my reports?

[00:20:14] Charlie Sull: Do I care about my coworkers? Do I care about the people in my company? And if you can really, it’s kind of a mindset shift. If you can really make that shift to yes, I care about these people as people, the rest of culture, at least our research suggests will flow from that relatively naturally.

[00:20:32] Charlie Sull: If you really care about people, you’re going to want to make sure they have fair compensation. You’re going to want to make sure they have development opportunities. You’re going to want to make sure they’re being respected. They’re being included. They’re not being treated unfairly. So I guess on a parting note, I would say the number one thing that’s correlated with the strong culture across the sample of 3.6 million employees is caring about employees. And maybe if you’re listening to this today, this can be your daily reminder to care about the people you work with as humans.

[00:21:01] Nena Dimovska: Thank you. I mean, that’s such a benevolent and optimistic thought. And let’s close on that. I mean, there’s so much more to discuss and learn. Hope we’ll have a chance to do this again. And thank you so much for the talk, Charlie.

[00:21:14] Charlie Sull: Of course. Thank you, Nina.

[00:21:15] Nena Dimovska: Thank you for tuning in to People Pulse. Charlie shared some amazing tips on building healthier, more productive companies. If you like what you heard, don’t forget to subscribe and share it with your network. Keep your finger on the pulse of your people, empower them and success will follow. See you in the next episode.