A conversation with Jolene Skinner on how culture is revealed through everyday decisions, reinforced through leadership and recognition, and reshaped by the human capabilities becoming more valuable in the age of AI.
Host: Adam Kleckner (Head of Strategy at LinkTech), Tia Kleckner (CEO at LinkTech)
Summary:
Jolene Skinner is an HR executive and organizational psychologist with more than 25 years of experience building cultures and leaders. Using Edgar Schein’s organizational culture model, she explains why culture runs deeper than values on a wall- and how assumptions, language, spending, performance systems, and executive behavior reveal what an organization truly values. She also challenges conventional skills-based hiring and identifies judgment, relationships, and communication as essential human capabilities in an AI-enabled workplace.
Main Topics:
- Edgar Schein’s layers of culture: assumptions, values, and artifacts
- Why decisions and spending reveal an organization’s real priorities
- Building culture as a cohesive operating system rather than disconnected programs
- Embedding expectations through performance, recognition, training, and onboarding
- Why CEOs and senior leaders shape culture through language and behavior
- Skills in context: testing what people will do, not only what they know
- Judgment, relationships, and communication in the age of AI
- Legacy, motherhood, mentorship, and bringing a fuller perspective to leadership
Intriguing Quotes:
“Pay attention to how decisions get made and pay attention to how money gets spent.”
“If you control how people are rewarded and recognized, you will change behavior faster than anything else.”
“Culture is unique to every company. It should be bespoke.”
“Skills are what you know, but they’re not necessarily what you’re gonna do.”
“Perks are not culture.”
Key Moments:
[01:30] Jolene introduces Edgar Schein’s model and the three layers that create a complete view of organizational culture.
[03:25] Her shortcut for understanding culture: watch how decisions are made, whose voice matters, and where money goes.
[07:08] Building MongoDB’s culture from the ground up by first clarifying what it means to be an employee.
[09:01] Why performance and recognition systems are the fastest way to embed expectations and change behavior.
[14:40] Culture starts with the CEO and C-suite because employees study their language, decisions, and stories.
[18:45] The hidden weight of leadership: off-the-cuff words are often remembered as signals of what a leader truly believes.
[22:30] Why skills-based hiring is incomplete without context, behavior, and evidence of how someone performs under pressure.
[29:11] The three human capabilities AI makes more important: judgment, relationships, and communication.
[33:29] Jolene reflects on legacy, mentoring younger women, and giving voice to parts of leadership often kept behind the scenes.
[39:59] The lightning-round answer every company needs to hear: perks are not culture.
[40:42] What never appears on her resume: the perspective created by a remarkably diverse range of work and life experiences.
Notable Resources:
- MongoDB: https://www.mongodb.com/
Concepts: Culture architecture; skills in context; performance reinforcement; human judgment; leadership language
Connect with Jolene Skinner:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jolene-skinner/
Connect with The Human Advantage Podcast:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/thelinktech/
- Website: https://www.thelinktech.com/podcast