full transcript

From the Ted Talk by WorkLife with Adam Grant: Bonus The fall of WeWork's culture

Unscramble the Blue Letters


DF: I think we were selling cultural intervention. I think a culture is uemialtlty the aggregates of the micro-actions that an organization takes, and we couldn't entirely control those. But I think we were trying to help shape culture. The big learning for me was that space and the physical environment helped, but at the end of the day it was the core and how the ogtirazioann behaved that would ultimately shape the culture. And companies who are looking to try to bring cultural lightning rods to the organization would bring a whole group into a wrowek, because it was so different from whatever their corporate eonivrmennt was. So we would be used as a bit of a lever for clturual change. So I think we were helping inform culture. I think companies were looking to us to think about culture in a different way. I would say the unfortunate part is I think they gave too much emphasis to the space itself. And that, you know, what one of my colleagues at WeWork at the time called cultural confetti, and much more of the appliqué of cturlue than, like, the deep ientnrlas of culture. So I think we were trying to have those conversations and it was a tricky thing to navigate, understanding that our product in the market was scpae, and flexibility in space, while still trying to have a meaningful impact on the employee experience.

Open Cloze


DF: I think we were selling cultural intervention. I think a culture is __________ the aggregates of the micro-actions that an organization takes, and we couldn't entirely control those. But I think we were trying to help shape culture. The big learning for me was that space and the physical environment helped, but at the end of the day it was the core and how the ____________ behaved that would ultimately shape the culture. And companies who are looking to try to bring cultural lightning rods to the organization would bring a whole group into a ______, because it was so different from whatever their corporate ___________ was. So we would be used as a bit of a lever for ________ change. So I think we were helping inform culture. I think companies were looking to us to think about culture in a different way. I would say the unfortunate part is I think they gave too much emphasis to the space itself. And that, you know, what one of my colleagues at WeWork at the time called cultural confetti, and much more of the appliqué of _______ than, like, the deep _________ of culture. So I think we were trying to have those conversations and it was a tricky thing to navigate, understanding that our product in the market was _____, and flexibility in space, while still trying to have a meaningful impact on the employee experience.

Solution


  1. environment
  2. space
  3. wework
  4. ultimately
  5. internals
  6. organization
  7. cultural
  8. culture

Original Text


DF: I think we were selling cultural intervention. I think a culture is ultimately the aggregates of the micro-actions that an organization takes, and we couldn't entirely control those. But I think we were trying to help shape culture. The big learning for me was that space and the physical environment helped, but at the end of the day it was the core and how the organization behaved that would ultimately shape the culture. And companies who are looking to try to bring cultural lightning rods to the organization would bring a whole group into a WeWork, because it was so different from whatever their corporate environment was. So we would be used as a bit of a lever for cultural change. So I think we were helping inform culture. I think companies were looking to us to think about culture in a different way. I would say the unfortunate part is I think they gave too much emphasis to the space itself. And that, you know, what one of my colleagues at WeWork at the time called cultural confetti, and much more of the appliqué of culture than, like, the deep internals of culture. So I think we were trying to have those conversations and it was a tricky thing to navigate, understanding that our product in the market was space, and flexibility in space, while still trying to have a meaningful impact on the employee experience.

Frequently Occurring Word Combinations


ngrams of length 2

collocation frequency
strong cultures 8
strong culture 4
people felt 4
helping people 3
adam neumann 3
dark side 3
pot roast 3
belief system 3
emotional intelligence 3
organizational psychologist 2
dave fano 2
comic book 2
community manager 2
community team 2
high growth 2
aaron kay 2
passion tax 2
incredibly strong 2
tremendous amount 2
great grandparent 2
jim baron 2
sandra cha 2
emotionally intelligent 2
stéphane côté 2
career decisions 2


Important Words


  1. aggregates
  2. appliqué
  3. behaved
  4. big
  5. bit
  6. bring
  7. called
  8. change
  9. colleagues
  10. companies
  11. confetti
  12. control
  13. conversations
  14. core
  15. corporate
  16. cultural
  17. culture
  18. day
  19. deep
  20. emphasis
  21. employee
  22. environment
  23. experience
  24. flexibility
  25. gave
  26. group
  27. helped
  28. helping
  29. impact
  30. inform
  31. internals
  32. intervention
  33. learning
  34. lever
  35. lightning
  36. market
  37. meaningful
  38. navigate
  39. organization
  40. part
  41. physical
  42. product
  43. rods
  44. selling
  45. shape
  46. space
  47. takes
  48. time
  49. tricky
  50. ultimately
  51. understanding
  52. unfortunate
  53. wework