The C-suite and the C-topic
- May 1
- 9 min read
This article combines reflections on an investor conference, how senior management talk about culture and a live experiment to capture the meaty content, mince it though a Gen AI platform and see what tasty sausages or off-putting offal pop out the other end.
Quick Culture Question
On Tuesday (28th April 2026) morning I wrote a quick Linkedin post flagging that Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM) was hosting its 2026 Investment Conference later that day, with the theme “What's a Winning Culture?” [i]:
As the conference blurb noted:
𝘊𝘰𝘳𝘱𝘰𝘳𝘢𝘵𝘦 𝘤𝘶𝘭𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦 𝘪𝘴 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘰𝘯𝘭𝘺 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘱𝘦𝘵𝘪𝘵𝘪𝘷𝘦 𝘢𝘥𝘷𝘢𝘯𝘵𝘢𝘨𝘦 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘤𝘢𝘯'𝘵 𝘤𝘰𝘱𝘺 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘩𝘢𝘳𝘥𝘦𝘴𝘵 𝘵𝘰 𝘣𝘶𝘪𝘭𝘥. 𝘊𝘢𝘯 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘮𝘦𝘢𝘴𝘶𝘳𝘦 𝘪𝘵? 𝘛𝘳𝘢𝘯𝘴𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘮 𝘪𝘵? 𝘚𝘤𝘢𝘭𝘦 𝘪𝘵 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩𝘰𝘶𝘵 𝘭𝘰𝘴𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘪𝘵? 𝘈𝘯𝘥 𝘸𝘪𝘵𝘩 𝘈𝘐 𝘳𝘦𝘴𝘩𝘢𝘱𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘰𝘳𝘨𝘢𝘯𝘪𝘻𝘢𝘵𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘴, 𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘥𝘰𝘦𝘴 𝘢 𝘸𝘪𝘯𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘤𝘶𝘭𝘵𝘶𝘳𝘦 𝘭𝘰𝘰𝘬 𝘭𝘪𝘬𝘦 𝘪𝘯 2026?
The subtext of my post was - if the world’s largest investor in equity thinks culture is a topic worthy of consideration perhaps we all should. NBIM holding 1.5% in value of the world's listed companies, and being the biggest sovereign wealth fund for assets under management.
Given the power of NBIM's rolodex (and investment muscle), the list of speakers was impressive, culminating in a discussion between Nicolai Tangen and Jamie Dimon.
Nonetheless, I admitted to nervousness on the direction the day could take. Culture being a word and topic fraught with different interpretations, and not all of them helpful.
My initial framing of the alternative paths the conference and culture theme could take was:
a) Would participants make sweeping statements, with (over) confidence on what the culture-word even means. With certainty on what makes for a “strong” culture & where their own organizations sit?
Or
b) Would they address the topic with curiosity and humility? Thinking about culture as behaviour in aggregate. Focusing on what actually happens, and not an abstract set of values. Would they consider the imperative to understand the drivers behind behaviours and decisions, which may be personal, social, organisational or environmental. Would they embrace its messy complexity, and the insights and rigour that can be gleaned from behavioural science and other disciplines, or seek to shoe-horn it into familiar linear narratives?
What do you think happened?
Quick Culture Answer
It was a). Very much a). b) barely got a sniff
The Longer Answer
I watched the whole event. It was in parts entertaining, educational and exasperating.
You don’t need to take my word for it, for those with 4 hours to spare the full event recording is available here[ii]:
There was a lot of (over) confidence, conviction, storytelling, and heuristics, but very little in the way of thoughtful reflection, curiosity, behavioural insight or methodology.
There was much that reflected the belief that culture comes top down from the characteristics of a CEO, and many speakers talking about culture in broad “values” terms.
Most seemed to have 3+ corporate words that they claimed represented their firms.
What were they?
Winning, Integrity, Learning, Meritocracy, Extraordinary (colleagues), Performance, Risk-taking (calibrated), Empathy, Truth-telling (“telling the truth to your boss”), Speed, Innovation, Risk-taking, Ambition, Performance (high performance culture), Customer first, Employee fairness, Opportunity / chance to succeed, Purpose / societal contribution, Hard work, Vision, Aspiration, Resilience, Perseverance, Agency, Learning (through failure), Performance / development, Talent excellence (“top 1%”).
Worthy indeed. And in line with the values verbiage from most firms. A selection would look fine hanging in the imposing corporate reception and on the landing page of a glossy website.
But, as research has shown[iii], proclaimed values are largely irrelevant in relation to a firms performance. What matters is the operational reality and what is done, not what is said.
How did the presenters monitor that their values reflected operational reality and the behaviour of all employees, management, teams and locations? Little insight was forthcoming.
There was of course the bracing counterpoint and anti-values stance of Michael O Leary, CEO of Ryanair. But if you were to synthesize his comments the following words would probably predominate:
Efficiency, Execution, Profitability, Cost Discipline, Simplicity, Speed, Relentless Optimisation
There was also the usual raft of anecdotal causal claims on exemplar companies and post-hoc narratives (Nokia failure , Apple success etc).
With a collective noun of senior CEOs I guess we should not be surprised at the “leader as hero” narratives and the survivorship bias that feeds these pervasive stories.
The paths to success and failure are clear in hindsight, and a compelling tale of the secret ingredients and undoubted brilliance can be woven.
Highlights and Lowlights
To be fair, in a short conference with each CEO speaker having 15 or 20 minutes to make their point, it was inevitable that a top down approach to Culture would be taken, with a focus on gripping stories and anecdote.
There was little room for reflection on the messy complexity of day to day behaviour and the methods and mysteries of how that can be better understood and acted upon.
With that in mind, a few incidents that stuck in my mind:
1) The Micheal O Leary comedy act. Leaning into his mantra that there is no such thing as bad publicity. But within his brisk comments an interesting take on the topic can be found. Two quotes as follows:
“I get very nervous at these culture schmulture meetings. I am sceptical when we do all the cultural stuff.”
and
We are “constantly reinvesting the reinventing the system and fundamentally changing customer behaviour”
If you use the C-word then the topic is dismissed.
But when thinking about the importance of customer behaviour then there is a visceral agreement on the need to reinvest and reinvent at a systems level to shape human actions.
Behavioural scientists and psychologists would heartily concur.
As with customers, so it is with employees.
2) A panel discussion hosted by David Rubenstein had an interesting line of questioning.
To Micheal O Leary:
“the accountants I know are usually low key people, very boring people. How did you get this personality as an accountant?”
And to Robin Grew, CEO of Man Group.
“Robin, you are the CEO of Man Group. Right?” “Correct”. “And you're not a man. Right?” “ So I, well, since I last looked, yeah”.
Is this the best way of introducing the CEO of a Global company? I am not convinced.
3) As Nandan Nilekani, Chairman and Co-Founder of Infosys, was giving his presentation a murmur rippled across the room as Jamie Dimon entered, slightly throwing Nandan off script.
As he ad-libbed:
“It's like the head of state has come in or something”
4) Nicolai Tangen to Jamie Dimon:
“You've been talking about jobs. You've been president of the bank for a long time. What about being president of a country?”
“I guess it's too late for me for that. If you anointed me, I'd be happy to do it, but there's no way I'd get through primaries.
I love what I do. I do a lot to try to help my company and my country and the world from here. I'd have to give it up for a quixotic thing.”
Time is short – so now for some AI help to summarize the Conference
In an attempt to get this summary out quickly, to practice using AI tools and leaning into Nicolai Tangen’s encouragement for us all to learn these new AI enabled approaches, I also ran a live experiment.
This involved recording the conference, automatic transcribing and then feeding the text content back though Gen AI for onwards summarizing and interpretation.
The results of this are shown as an Appendix to this article (see below).
Yes I know it is hardly the cutting edge. But the rapid advance in the accuracy and availability of speech to text and AI analysis is (for a relative Luddite such as me) startling.
However, in the spirit of transparency, it is clear how all our own confirmation biases can skew the results.
My prompt directed the AI to analyse the conference through the lens of whether speakers were addressing culture from a top down and values perspective, or whether they were using more advanced behavioural approaches.
Unsurprisingly the sycophantic AI fed me what I wanted and expected.
If I had asked for a glowing summary of CEO insights and social media sound bites I would have got something completely different.
The Norges Bank Investment Management approach
As noted in my original Linkedin post earlier this week. Despite the frustrations on how the topic of culture and behaviour is often tackled I am a glass half-full person.
If the worlds biggest equity investor is talking culture, then that is to be applauded and momentum should continue to build.
And with Nicolai Tangen's expertise in organisational psychology[iv] the willingness to subject NBIM to an anthropological review[v] and prior interest in work around the use of Unobtrusive Indicators of Culture (UICs)[vi] then the auspices are good.
Hopefully the top down focus on Culture highlighted in this conference continues to be supplemented by pointed questions to investee companies, such as:
How do you assess the state of the behavioural landscape within your organization, using what expertise, approaches and capability? How do you identify outliers and areas of interest, and what do you do about it?
Appendix – What the AI analysis told me:
As the Investor conference was broadcast I clicked the dictate and transcribe button on my Word document and then converted it to text at the end of the day. It was 110 pages of content. I then fed it through my pet AI engine to analyse how the content reflected the speaker’s approach to Culture.
The full output as below:
This is a strong example of what you often see at senior executive conferences: a lot of conviction, storytelling, and heuristics, but very little in the way of formal behavioural or measurement methodology.
Here’s a structured assessment.
1. Headline verdict
Overwhelmingly assertion-based, top-down thinking
~90–95% of the discussion = general assertions, leader heuristics, and anecdote
~5–10% = proto-behavioural thinking (implicit, not formalised)
~0% = explicit use of advanced behavioural science or rigorous culture measurement frameworks
There are no references to:
Experimental methods (A/B testing, RCTs)
Behavioural diagnostics frameworks
Validated psychometrics or culture measurement tools
Causal inference or data-driven culture analysis
2. What does dominate: Top-down cultural assertions
Across speakers, culture is framed as:
A. Leader-driven (“culture comes from the top”)
“Basically culture is coming from the characteristics of a CEO”
“It comes from the top”
This is a classic but simplistic model:
Culture = CEO personality transmission
No mechanism, measurement, or organisational system described
B. Normative definitions of “good culture”
Speakers define culture in broad value terms:
“Customer comes first”
“Treat employees well”
“Have ambition”
“High agency people”
“Winning”
Example:
“Making certain that the customer comes first… employees are treated fairly…”
These are:
Aspirational
Non-operationalised
Non-measurable
C. Anecdote-driven causal claims
Example:
Nokia failure → “culture of fear”
Apple success → “culture built by Steve Jobs”
“Mid managers didn’t dare to tell the top management… six years later Nokia [collapsed]”
These are:
Post-hoc narratives
Not tested against alternative explanations (e.g. strategy, technology, market timing)
D. Strong but untested beliefs
Particularly clear in Ryanair:
“Fear. Terror.” “We’re not interested in explaining our culture”
This is:
Pure managerial philosophy
No attempt to validate impact beyond business outcomes
3. Where behavioural thinking does appear (implicitly)
There are a few moments that align with behavioural science, but they are:
Not labelled as such
Not systematised
Not measured
A. Incentives & behaviour shaping (Ryanair)
Charging for bags:
“We went from 80%… bringing a bag… to 20%”
This is actually:
A classic behavioural intervention
Changing default behaviour via pricing friction
But:
No framing in terms of incentives, elasticity, or behavioural response modelling
B. Agency & empowerment (Citadel)
“The most junior person closest to the information should make the decision”
This reflects:
Decentralised decision-making
Information proximity principle
But again:
No measurement of decision quality, error rates, or learning loops
C. Learning through failure
“They will learn from their successes and failures”
Aligned with:
Feedback loops / experiential learning
But:
No structured learning system or metrics
D. Talent selection heuristics
Citadel:
Looks for “aspiration,” “resilience,” “competitive experience”
These loosely map to:
Psychological traits (grit, motivation)
But:
No validated assessment tools mentioned
No predictive modelling of performance
4. What is completely missing (and should stand out)
From a behavioural science / modern culture analytics perspective, the absence is stark.
A. No measurement frameworks
No mention of:
Culture diagnostics
Behavioural KPIs
Network analysis
Engagement or sentiment analytics
B. No experimentation
Zero discussion of:
Testing interventions
Comparing approaches
Iterating based on evidence
C. No causal thinking
Claims like:
“Culture drives performance”
“Fear destroys companies”
…but:
No attempt to isolate variables or prove causality
D. No behavioural segmentation
No recognition that:
Different employee groups behave differently
Culture is heterogeneous within firms
E. No system-level design
Culture is treated as:
A trait (CEO personality)
Not a system (incentives, structures, norms, information flows)
5. Maturity assessment
If you benchmark this against modern organisational/behavioural practice:
Level observed: Low–Medium maturity
Strengths:
Strong intuition from experienced operators
Clear linkage between behaviour and outcomes (at a narrative level)
Some implicit behavioural levers (incentives, agency)
Weaknesses:
No formalisation
No measurement
No replication capability
Heavy reliance on leader mythology
6. Key insight (the important one)
This conference reflects a “founder/CEO folklore model of culture”:
Culture = leadership personality + values + stories
Whereas a modern behavioural approach would define:
Culture = observable behaviours shaped by systems, incentives, norms, and feedback loops, measured and iterated over time
That gap is the central finding.
7. Practical takeaway for you
If you're using this for strategy or positioning there’s a clear opportunity:
The gap in the market is:
Moving from “culture as narrative” to “culture as measurable system”
What these leaders are not doing (but should be):
· Quantifying behaviours
· Testing interventions
· Using behavioural diagnostics
· Linking micro-behaviours to macro outcomes
8. If you want to go further
I can:
Turn this into a scoring framework you can apply to other conferences
Map what “advanced culture measurement” would look like in practice
Or benchmark this transcript against best-in-class behavioural organisations
Just tell me.
That’s OK. I have plenty enough for the time being...
References
[iii] Luigi Guiso, Paola Sapienza, Luigi Zingales, The value of corporate culture, Journal of Financial Economics, Volume 117, Issue 1, 2015.
[iv] LSE Event: In Conversation with Nicolai Tangen - Social Science and Successful Companies
[v] Anthropological gaze, stories, and reflections on NBIM culture (Tone Danielsen) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/377982495_Anthropological_gaze_stories_and_reflections_on_NBIM_culture
[vi] Reader, T. W., & Gillespie, A. (2023). Developing a battery of measures for unobtrusive indicators of organisational culture: a research note. Journal of Risk Research, 26(1), 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1080/13669877.2022.2108116
Comments