The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups

Product Information

When Forming New Groups, Focus on Two Critical Moments: “Traces any group’s cooperation norms to two critical moments that happen in a group’s early life. They are: 1. The first vulnerability. 2. The first disagreement.” Pg. 161 The point is it won't matter who you have in your group; it's how you work together that's important. Many businesses and groups have failed because they've emphasized individuals, individual performance, and micromanagement. Coyle says we need to rethink this, and uses the superb example of Kindergarteners vs. MBA students. Creating a sense of purpose is extensive, collaborative, and organic. The process: to continually reflect together about what matters most, and then to translate that meaning into tangible signals.

It consisted of one simple phrase: I’m giving you these comments because I have very high expectations and I know that you can reach them.” Pg. 56 Actually, if you look more closely at the sentence, it contains three separate cues: 1. You are part of this group. 2. This group is special; we have high standards here. 3. I believe you can reach those standards.” Pg. 56 Building a team has never been harder than it is right now. How do you create connection and trust? How do you stay focused on your goals? In his years studying the ways successful groups work together, Daniel Coyle has spent time with elite teams around the world, observing the ways they support each other, manage conflict, and move toward a common goal. In The Culture Playbook, he distills everything he has learned into sixty concrete, actionable tips and exercises that will help your team build a cohesive, positive culture. Beneath Hsieh’s unconventional approach lies a mathematical structure based on what he calls collisions. Collisions—defined as serendipitous personal encounters—are, he believes, the lifeblood of any organization, the key driver of creativity, community, and cohesion. He has set a goal of having one thousand “collisionable hours” per year for himself and a hundred thousand ‘collisionable hours” per acre for the Downtown Project.” Pg. 66 You hear ‘thank-yous’ all the time in highly successful groups. They aren’t only expressions of gratitude; they’re crucial belonging cues that generate a contagious sense of safety, connection, and motivation.Pixar’s BrainTrust and Navy SEAL’s AARs (After Action Review) are good places to answer these questions. Safety is not mere emotional weather but rather the foundation on which strong culture is built.” Pg. 6 Great cultures, Coyle has found, are built on three essential skills: safety, vulnerability, and purpose. Within this framework, he shows us how we can better serve our teammates, ourselves, and our shared purpose. The term we use to describe this kind of interaction is ‘chemistry’, and spending time in such a group is almost physically addictive. How to Build Belonging

The Navy SEALs examples are very engaging — I encourage you to read the book so you can read and understand them. I especially like the description of how the SEALs were established — and the type of training they undergo to reinforce team behavior. They learn how to move together, trust each other and figure things out as they go because they trust each other and they understand how things have to be done. He also goes into the rules around a complicated improv exercise with a successful comedy troupe where “Every rule directs you either to tamp down selfish instincts that might make you the center of attention, or to serve your fellow actors (support, save, trust, listen).” Of vulnerability, Coyle says: “Vulnerability doesn’t come after trust—it precedes it. Leaping into the unknown, when done alongside others, causes the solid ground of trust to materialize beneath our feet.” The final tips include: Name and rank your priorities; Be 10x as clear about these priorities as you think you ought, determine where your team aims for proficiency (and for creativity); Embrace the use of catchphrases; Measure what really matters; Use artifacts; Focus on bar-setting behaviors — and go read this book if you want to learn more about what all those things mean!Creating safety is about dialing in to small, subtle moments and delievering targeted signals at key points.” Pg. 75 As with any workout, the key is to understand that the pain is not a problem but the path to building a stronger group. 3. ESTABLISH PURPOSE From that moment on, I realized that I needed to figure out ways to help the group function more effectively. The problem here is that, as humans, we have an authority bias that’s incredibly strong and unconscious—if a superior tells you to do something, by God we tend to follow it, even when it’s wrong. Having one person tell other people what to do is not a reliable way to make good decisions.” Pg. 138-139 The BrainTrust is Pixar’s method of assessing and improving its movies during their development. Each film is BrainTrusted about half a dozen times. The meeting brings the film’s director together with a handful of the studio’s veteran directors and producers, all of whom watch the latest version of the movie and offer their candid opinion.

All this helps reveal a paradox about the way belonging works. Belonging feels like it happens from the inside out, but in fact it happens from the outside in. Our social brains light up when they receive a steady accumulation of almost-invisible cues: We are close, we are safe, we share a future.” Pg. 25-26 The most important part of creating vulnerability often resides not in what you say, but in what you do not say. This means having the willpower to forgo easy opportunities to offer solutions and make suggestions.Roles – “Successful teams were explicitly told by the team leader why their individual and collective skills were important for the team’s success, and why it was important for them to perform as a team. Unsuccessful teams were not.” Pg. 196 When we talk about courage, we think it’s going against an enemy with a machine gun,’ Cooper says. ‘The real courage is seeing the truth and speaking the truth to each other. People never want to be the person who says, ‘Wait a second, what’s really going on here?’ But inside the squadron, that is the culture, and that’s why we’re successful.’” Pg. 145 One habit I saw in successful groups was that of sneak-previewing future relationships, making small but telling connections between now and a vision of the future.” Pg. 78 Finally, they create purpose with simple beacons that focus attention and engagement on the shared goal. If I could get a sense of the way your culture works by meeting just one person, who would that person be?” pg. 148-149