it's just incredible. but invention, you don't know what it's like.

working on the future of materials. it's pretty cool and warm stuff. and "press: here" will be back in just a minute.

welcome back to "press: here." twitter is stuck with sort of a strange problem. very few people who work at twitter want elon musk to run

the place. but they'd also benefit financially from forcing musk to keep his promise and buy twitter for far more than it's really worth. it's a badly thought out business deal mostly with bad options. melissa daimler is an expert on corporate culture. she just wrote a book called "reculturing." and i thought i would bring her on to talk about twitter and just sort of corporate culture in general. melissa welcome. if musk is forced to buy twitter, what sort of corporate culture is he going to run into at that company? >> uh, wow. you never know with musk. i can say that i was at twitter in what i would call the glory days. i was there between 2012 and 2016 prior to it even going public. so, at that time i think we were very strong in terms of having a clear strategy and making sure their culture aligned with that.

i think musk is a wild card, as we all know, and i hope that if he does end up taking over the company that he keeps a lot of the good foundational components of what twitter has built both strategically and culturally. >> i suppose it would really help us to define what culture is. i've heard it called the things that employees do when the boss is not around. >> yeah, that is not how i define culture. [ laughter ] in fact, it's one of the reasons i wrote the book. i think there's been a lot of definitions out there. culture is a concept that has been around for over 70 years, which i did not realize. but we've had a hard time defining it. i've heard it's the organization's personality, it's what makes people happy, it's what motivates people. and i think that we can design and operationalize culture in a

way that gives us all an opportunity to contribute to that. so, i believe that it is three things. it goes beyond values. it's our behaviors, how we work with each other. it's integrating those behaviors into some of those core people processes that we have. so how we interview, how we give feedback. and it's also just our daily practices, you know, how we have meetings, how we connect like this. >> you're still affected by company culture even when you're working at home. >> i think that is the big ah-hah that a lot of people have had in the last couple of years, that we connected and even conflated culture with ping pong tables and donuts and free food and perks. and while all of that is great, i love a good free sandwich, that is not culture. so, while we've been at home these last couple of years,

we've still done culture. i think culture is a more active word. i say it's a verb. when we all think about culture and we're all working from home, that's where i think the behaviors and how we work together shows up even more than being in an office. >> so, if you have a good company culture, if somebody shows up who's not a good cultural fit, who goes against the grain of what it is that, you know, maybe your company's been around 20 years, 20 years of this is the way we've done it and we like it this way, that person tends to then move on. you can get rid of a cancerous person, a person who's cancerous to your culture. but what can derail culture? what is company culture -- and i'm talking about a positive company culture here. what is its biggest enemy? >> i think the biggest enemy of

culture is relegating it to hr as a one-off initiative and not being able to see it as a strategic lever to help drive your business. >> so, that was good culture. let's talk about bad culture. you were at we work for a while. you seem to understand almost right away, you couldn't fix the corporate culture there. >> yeah. one of the things i talk about in the book is this idea of looking at an organization and culture as a system. so there are so many different parts, as we know. so when we're shifting our strategy, there's an opportunity to also look at our culture and our behaviors. and i think there's been a lot of good stories. there's the hulu docu-series. there are a few movies and books on we work so you can read all the juicy stuff there. but all of it pointed to adam newman as the ceo. and while he definitely had his faults, i think it's more about the cracks in the system.

so you not only had adam as the ceo, but you had a very junior leadership team that wasn't diverse, they didn't have a lot of diverse thinking that was brought to the table. >> in your book, you mentioned two of my favorite people. chip created the hotel chain, and patty ran hr at netflix. she invented hr at netflix. what did you learn from them? >> i just have so much respect for both of them. and side note, i think they're both just fun to be around. patty, i interviewed her for the book, i had a pain in my side because i was laughing so much. but netflix, you know, she spearheaded that whole culture deck with what a lot of us are familiar with especially in silicon valley. and i think she inspired me to think beyond values and go to

more of that behavioral concept. so netflix, you know, over ten years ago, identified what are those kind of 15 to 20 core behaviors that we expect from everybody in the organization is our playbook. and then embedded those into their hiring process and how they give feedback. i just have a lot of respect. and i think what i also appreciate about patty is she is provocative. she kind of pokes at the typical components that we think about when we think about hr. she believes that hr has a very big role to play and a strategic place at the table. and she did just that at netflix. i think chip is, you know, he was reculturing before i defined it as reculturing. and every company, even what he's doing now, he has this amazing retreat center in baja,

mexico. and he continues to not just be a good thought leader, like he was when he ran the hotel chain, but he is always looking at how best to bring people along, how to strengthen a culture. and i appreciated my time with chip. he's always -- i think i ended the book with a question that he often asks people. and he's asked people his entire career, how can i help you do your best work. and i think ultimately that's what we all want. that's what we're trying to strive for when we think about culture. >> well, chip and patty are friends of mine. melissa, thank you for being with us this morning. melissa is currently chief learning officer. in the past she's helped netflix, adobe, amazon, pixar with their organization and culture.

well, up next on "press: here," we'll continue our look at life inside the office with a major manufacturer of office furniture. "press: here" will be right back. for years, california's non-gaming tribes have been left in the dust. wealthy tribes with big casinos make billions, while small tribes struggle in poverty. prop 27 is a game changer. 27 taxes and regulates online sports betting to fund permanent solution to homelessness. while helping every tribe in california. so who's attacking prop 27? wealthy casino tribes who want all the money for themselves support small tribes, address homelessness. vote yes on 27.

welcome back to "press: here." if you're just joining us, we were talking about company culture just before the break. now i want to bring in jonathan webb, he is an executive at the office furniture company ki,

which outfits workspaces for companies like disney and amazon and microsoft. jonathan's team recently surveyed 400 architects, designers and businesses to figure out what they were hoping to do with offices now that at least some people were coming back to work. good morning, jonathan. what'd you find? what's the post pandemic office going to look like? >> well, it's going to be different, that's for sure. i think when we talk about amenities and we talk about extras, i don't think we're talking about things like ping pong tables and other playful amenities like that to bring people back to the office. the advent of hybrid work has really taken over our conversations with our clients. employers are redefining the value of the proposition of the office. focus work can occur anywhere, as we've all learned working from home during the pandemic.

so, maybe office extras. they're now focused on providing environments that promote i think really three very specific things. so, the first are collaborative environments. and i can't overstate this strongly enough. organizations and employers both recognize the importance of face-to-face engagement. we're seeing an increase in the number of spaces specifically designed for ideation and group interaction in the offices. and that old one-to-one ratio, if you remember every time we hired an fte, we gave them one work station that. old ratio of one is one is really being reduced to accommodate those new spaces. the second -- >> so you're talking about not everyone having their own desk as a full-time employee, but hoteling? or how would you handle that? i think when i walk in with my little plant and my pencil sharpener, i don't get a desk? >> you might not. it depends on the organization, and it depends on the amount of real estate that they have. but because the focus on getting

people back to the office is about creating engagement, it's about getting people back together in person to work and to collaborate. that might mean less personal space. and it might mean that you have freedom of choice that you can choose to do work at home, like some of us do one, two, more days a week. but when you come back to the office, it might feel a little bit more free. it might feel like you still have a choice, but you might not necessarily have a choice to go to your own personally work station. >> if you have a corporate laptop, that is your office. you brought it from home, and then you find a small conference room or a work station or somewhere else and you're back. and goodnesson't have an office phone. that's your cell phone in your pocket. >> yeah, absolutely. that's that second extra that we talk about now in the office is, you know, back in 2020 we all became video conferencing experts overnight.

we all learned how to do it on a laptop or on a desktop. but organizations overall were probably not equipped to be able to accommodate video conferencing when we have a certain percentage of people in the office and a certain percentage of people at home. the types of amenities are largely technology based. they're really on the idea that we want to welcome people back to the office that are coming back to the office, want to come back to the office. but we still need to make room in our everyday meetings for those of us who are spending a day or two or more at home, and we need to be able to do that in a very meaningful way and create environments that allow us to easily video conference with each other and still be in person with each other. >> we have cubicles in our news room, and now they're even more cubecles in the sense that they put plexiglass up to practically the cerealing on ceiling.

>> the open plan -- we went back to four or five years ago to open plan, get rid of all the cubicles. and then overnight the great plexiglass shortage of 2020 where everyone needed plexiglass. you couldn't find it anywhere, i think it was amazing. i think we're starting to see the plexiglass come down. that's a good thing. but i do think we're starting to see a lot more flexibility and a lot more creativity built in environments, especially when we're talking about environments for groups to engage or work together while they're in the office. >> and some companies are doing some sort of lifestyle spending account in which i don't know what you guys want, but here's money, and if your perk is gyms and your perk is doing something else, just figure it out yourself.

>> yeah. and that's really that last point that i was going to make is that third extra is really a more comprehensive strategy to address organizational well-being. so i would say before the pandemic, we talk a lot with our clients about wellness programs. and what we did from a furniture perspective was try to create environments that promoted inherit movement throughout the workplace. whether it was a sit/stand desk or different types of environments that encourage people to get up and move around through a variety of work environments, promoting outdoor spaces, we still have all of that. but now the shift is really focused from wellness to well-being, overall well-being. so there's a mental health component in our daily office lives as well. so i think one of the shifts that you're going to start to see, the wellness programs are not going to go away. but i think you're going to start to see an increase, and we are already starting to see an increase in the number of

programs that support overall well-being, mental health well-being as well. >> it's interesting for a furniture manufacture to be saying that. but you're absolutely right. you work in an office designing offices. what's your least favorite part of your own office or your own office building? >> um, i would say probably the least favorable thing about our office building is that it's kind of old. our office building was back in the 1970s. but we are really happy to announce that we are just starting plans for a brand-new headquarters at ki. it's something we've been looking forward to doing in the future. and i'm hoping in the next couple two, three years we'll be able to break ground on a new ki headquarters. we understand that it takes time and resources and money to build out spaces to do architecture.

even to buy furniture. so, if you're going to do it, you better have a very solid workplace strategy in hand and you better to be able to answer why is this important to the organization. for us, it's about attracting and retaining talent. that's always been our number one priority, especially younger talent. i don't think everybody comes out of college thinking that they want to work in the office furniture industry, right? i think a lot of manufacturers feel like that in a lot of different industries. so we want to make sure that we are presenting the best possible environment, the most flexible workplace possible. that's a priority for us at ki. >> and, lastly, and just speaking of young people, what are the next generation of office workers asking for? what's their highest priority? >> flexibility. i mean, at the end of the day, these are individuals that have spent the last four to six years of their lives in what i would

call the ultimate flexible environment. it's funny that it took to 2020 for so many individuals to work from home and to have this ability to work anywhere. if you think about a college student, college students do work everywhere. their favorite learning spot or working spot might be the cafeteria or the commons or the library or the park bench or somewhere outside. they're the original distributive workforce. they want to carry those work styles into corporate life. they want to have the ability and the flexibility to work where they want and how they want. and they want to be productive in doing so. i think you're going to start to see a lot of companies that they're going to look to collegiate design as a driver for corporate design. they're going to look at a college campus and say this is how my next generation of worker likes to work. we should maybe try to emulate some satisfy those environments. we're already starting to see some of that. >> well, jonathan webb is an

executive at the office furniture manufacturer ki. i appreciate you being with us this morning. and "press: here" will be back in just a minute. bringing people together makes the bay area stronger. >> so we're committed to telling your stories. >> connecting you to solutions. >> and making sure your voice is heard. nbc bay area moving you forward. ♪ ♪ elon musk says tesla's full self-driving software is “amazing”, it will “blow your mind.” but does it work? this happens over and over again. 100,000 tesla drivers are already using full self-driving on public roads. i'm dan o'dowd. i'm a safety engineer and tesla full self-driving is the worst commercial software i've ever seen. tell congress to shut it down.

paid for by the dawn project. a reminder, we have sort of a sister podcast called sand hill road, which is all about venture capital in silicon valley. you can find sand hill road anywhere you find your quality podcast like apple podcast and google play and stitchr and spotify. you can even ask alexa. play the latest episode. my thanks to my guests and thank you for making us part of your sunday morning. ♪♪ ♪♪

♪♪♪ ♪♪♪ damian trujillo: hello, and welcome to "comunidad del valle." i'm damian trujillo, and today we're going to look into the latino voter turnout of the 2022 primaries and how embarrassing that turnout was. initially, it was reported that only 10% of california latinos went out and voted. it was later upgraded to 15%, still, an embarrassing turnout. what does that mean? we're gonna start the program with the former vice mayor of the city of san jose, the first latina elected to the san jose city council, the honorable blanca alvarado.