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How can leaders guide their teams through volatility while preserving their culture, mission, and humanity?
More than 200 of the world’s top business leaders and academics tackled this timely question at January’s eighth annual Culture Connect Conference at Haas. Under the theme “Adaptive Leadership in Volatile Times,” the two-day event, organized by the Berkeley Center for Workplace Culture and Innovation, explored navigating economic uncertainty, rapid AI advancement, and the evolving nature of work itself.
“This year’s theme could not be more timely,” said Dean Jenny Chatman, who co-founded the center and conference with Professor Sameer Srivastava.
In one session, Aaron “Ronnie” Chatterji, PhD 06, chief economist at OpenAI, noted that OpenAI’s mission to build artificial general intelligence (systems that are equal to or smarter than humans) to benefit all humanity is a competitive advantage in the intense war for AI talent.
“You can’t win it with money alone,” he said, adding that OpenAI also has a distinctive culture of questioning authority, including in open meetings with CEO Sam Altman.
Chatterji warned against a top-down approach to implementing AI, recommending that managers instead understand the tasks people enjoy (and would like to continue doing) versus those that slow them down (and thus are ripe for automation). “You need to figure out the human piece before you can figure out the implementation piece,” he said.
UC Berkeley Chancellor Rich Lyons, BS 82, spoke about evolving culture at an institutional scale. To help traditionally slow-moving universities adapt at the lightning speed of today’s changes, Lyons provided a framework to accelerate decision-making while maintaining thoughtfulness.
“We’re shifting UC Berkeley’s culture from ‘no, because’ to ‘yes, if,’” Lyons said. Rather than rejecting a new idea or request, people are encouraged to identify conditions that need to be met, then bring creativity to address them. “‘Yes, if’ gets you to action,” he said, distinguishing it from “yes, and,” which facilitates conversation but doesn’t necessarily drive results.
Conference Insights
Organizations must adapt.
Melissa Valentine, a Stanford associate professor, advocated for “flash teams”—specialists who can assemble rapidly for emerging challenges.Organizations must become more fluid and modular, she said, able to quickly assemble the right expertise for these challenges.
Human judgment remains critical.
Sarah Franklin, CEO of the people management platform Lattice, said workers must maintain domain knowledge to recognize incorrect AI outputs. “The skills most needed are definitely the human skills, the critical thinking, creativity, strategic planning, and really how we maintain our humanity when AI is there.”
Transformation may take longer than expected but go deeper.
Stanford Professor Chad Jones noted that transformative technologies have historically taken 30–50 years to fully materialize. “The good news is that we do have time, but I think we should use our time wisely.”
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