Portrait image for Samuel Culbert

Samuel Culbert

Professor of Management and Organizations
“I’m out to make the world of work fit for human consumption.”
Areas of Expertise:
  • Boss/Subordinate Teamwork
  • Corporate Culture and Workplace Milieus
  • Corporate Communications and Politics
  • Leadership Mentality
  • Personal Development
  • Strategizing for Enhanced Operating Effectiveness
  • Top Management Relationships and Collaboration
About
 
 

Biography

Schooled with a B.S. in systems engineering and a Ph.D. in clinical psychology, add in expertise in group dynamics and a consultant’s license to ask people what they actually think, and you get a professor with a way of understanding events and interpreting people’s actions that reveals a good deal that most people miss. That’s Samuel Culbert (Ph.D. ’66), UCLA Anderson professor of management and organizations, and it begins to describe what he’s able to uncover with his research and the insights he provokes with his teaching.

Culbert believes most managers are well-intentioned. But he also sees them immersed in a cultural force field that often has them disoriented — “engaged in actions having consequences they need to be aware of and do more about.” To that end, he’s written several books aimed at informing managers, students and other researchers about what’s taking place and needs revising, efforts that have earned him a muckraker’s reputation.

His research has led him to see trusting relationships as the most important tool any manager has for getting high-quality performances. But when he deconstructs managerial discourse, he finds that straight talk takes a back seat to bullsh*t, which doesn’t promote trust. The findings prompted him to write the book Beyond Bullsh*t: Straight-Talk at Work (Stanford Business Books, 2008), which reveals how bullsh*t has become the etiquette of choice in corporate communications and describes the conditions required for straight talk. SmartMoney Magazine named this book to its 2008 list of 10 top reads, and it was honored as a finalist for the National Best Book Awards.

Articulating the theoretical framework suggested by his findings for the Academy of Management, Culbert was asked about obstacles to managers’ establishing straight-talk relationships with their direct reports — the people whose effectiveness they’re out to enhance. “Easy,” he said, “it’s the annual pay and performance review.” Following up, he wrote a Sloan Management Review paper that was reprinted in another journal, and that sparked a major change taking place mainstream today. What journal has that influence? On October 20, 2008, his paper titled “ Get Rid of the Performance Review!” appeared full-page in the Wall Street Journal. And that led him and his WSJ editor to write an influential management book. In August 2020, the Wall Street Journal published Culbert’s op-ed “How the Pandemic Can Turn Bad Bosses into Good Ones.”

His most recent book, Good People, Bad Managers: How Work Culture Corrupts Good Intentions (Oxford University Press, 2017), focused on exposing “good management reasoning that leads to bad practices in the first place, and the doublethink reasoning managers use to hide the negatives their actions effect — from employees, from cohort managers and especially from themselves.”

Throughout his career, Culbert has creatively welded together three activities: consulting, teaching and writing. Consulting is where he encounters work effectiveness problems in their contemporary forms, demystifies the basic elements and constructs theoretical frameworks that suggest alternative modes of functioning. Teaching provides a forum for extrapolating from problems to issues requiring his investigation. Writing is where he packages his understanding for public consumption. 

Culbert is winner of a McKinsey Award for a best article of the year published in the Harvard Business Review, has been a frequent contributor to professional and academic journals, and has authored numerous chapters in leading management topic books.

 

Education

Ph.D. Clinical Psychology, 1966, UCLA

B.S. Industrial Engineering, 1961, Northwestern University

 

Courses

People in Organizations
Leadership, Motivation and Power
Leadership Foundations I & II 
Organizational Change Processes
Fieldwork in Behavioral Science Management Development
Consulting Styles and Practice

Samuel Culbert: Bosses Are Accountable, Too

What Makes an Employee Resource Group Successful?

 

Books

Culbert, S.A. Good People, Bad Managers: How Work Culture Corrupts Good Intentions, New York: Oxford University Press, 2017.

Culbert, S.A., with Rout, L., Get Rid Of The Performance Review! How Companies Can Stop Intimidating, Start Managing — and Focus on What Really Matters, New York: Hachette (Business Plus), 2010.

Culbert, S.A., Beyond Bullsh*t: Straight-Talk at Work, Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2008.

Culbert, S.A. and Ullmen, J.B. Don’t Kill the Bosses! San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2001.

Culbert, S.A.  Mindset-Management: The Heart of Leadership, New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.

Culbert, S.A. and McDonough, J.J., Radical Management: Power Politics and the Pursuit of Trust, New York: The Free Press, 1985.

Culbert, S.A. and McDonough, J.J. The Invisible War: Pursuing Self Interests at Work, New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1980.

Culbert, S.A. The Organization Trap, New York: Basic Books, 1974.

 

Published Papers

Culbert, S.A., Transorganizational Muckraking: Method and Style (introduction by Walter R. Nord), Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, March 25, 2016.

Culbert, S.A., Why Corporate Leaders Won't Abolish Performance Review, Harvard Business School Blog, September 21, 2010.

Culbert, S.A., Why Corporate Leaders Block The Candor They Say They Want (Featured Article), Ivey Business Journal, September/October, 2010.

Culbert, S.A., Get Rid of the Performance Review! 5, 50-55, Sloan Management Review, Business Insight, October 20, 2008. 

Culbert, S.A. Get Rid of the Performance Review!  Wall Street Journal, October 20, 2008.

 

Scholarship about Samuel Culbert

Nord, W. Samuel Culbert: The Magician’s Work on Organization Change, in Szabla, D.B. (Ed.), The Palgrave Handbook of Organizational Change Thinkers, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017.

 

Media Coverage

Scores of NPR interviews and commentaries as well as numerous big city TV and radio appearances, large city newspapers and national magazines.

For three minutes of fun about performance reviews:
http://abcnews.go.com/WNT/video/conversation-performance-review-11126992

On accountability:
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Two essential leadership lessons that most people don’t get (HEC, Nov 2006)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_f0bUnU4P0

Performance Reviews for Wall Street Journal
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wvwgRVD8vk

Culbert, S.A. Op-Ed: How the Pandemic Can Turn Bad Bosses into Good Ones. Wall Street Journal. August 3, 2020.

Culbert, S.A. Op-Ed: Performance Reviews are Corporate America’s Curse on Itself. Los Angeles Times. February 15, 2015.

Culbert, S.A., Op-Ed: How to Raise the Status of Teachers: Allow More Autonomy, New York Times. March 28, 2011.

Culbert, S.A., Op-Ed: Why Your Boss Is Wrong About You. New York TimesMarch 1, 2011. Excerpt named Business Quote of the week in The Week Magazine, March 18, 2011.

Culbert, S.A. Get Rid of the Performance Review!Wall Street Journal, October 20, 2008

 

Recognition

Association of American Publisher’s award for the best business and management book written with John J. McDonough.

Smart Moneys Top Ten Reads

Globe and Mail’s Top Ten Business Books

Axiom Business Book Award

Runner up, National Book Awards

McKinsey Award for best article in Harvard Business Review.