Tobias Sturesson: from cult to corporate culture

About this episode

Tobias Sturesson discusses the parallels between cults and corporate culture, exploring how organizations can develop unhealthy patterns and the challenges of speaking up within them.

What can businesses learn from cults? It might sound like an uncomfortable comparison: one involves strategy meetings, values statements and quarterly targets; the other manipulation, charismatic leaders and extreme behaviour. But perhaps the distinction isn't as clear as we'd like to think. Both create identities and shared beliefs. Both shape how people think and behave. And both can evolve gradually in ways that are hard to recognise from the inside. Unhealthy cultures rarely appear overnight. Small compromises become normal, difficult questions become harder to ask, and behaviours that once felt uncomfortable slowly become accepted. Episode Overview On this episode, I'm joined by Tobias Sturesson , culture advisor and author of You Can Culture , whose understanding of organisational culture comes not from business school, but from a deeply personal experience growing up inside a religious community that gradually evolved into a cult. Drawing on his own story — and his work helping organisations create healthier cultures — Tobias explains why good people can become part of unhealthy systems, why speaking up is often far harder than leaders realise, and why culture is shaped…

People in this episode

Host: Human Risk

Guest: Tobias Sturesson

Topics covered

• organizational culture
• cults
• identity
• behaviour
• unhealthy systems

Keywords

• cult
• corporate culture
• organizational behaviour
• identity
• unhealthy patterns

Mentioned in this episode

Books & works: You Can Culture

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