The Culture Code
The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups
By: Daniel Coyle
ISBN: 978-0-8041-7698-9
READ: January 2020
RATING: 9/10
Summary: A great read that’s super helpful to anyone looking to intentionally build a culture. Coyle has uncovered three keys to culture: 1. Build Safety 2. Share Vulnerability 3. Establish Purpose. He supports these ideas with research that’s laid out in an engaging and interesting manner. For organizational leaders and pastors building a culture is paramount. This book demystifies the process. My only critique is that it does drag on in a spot or two, but overall it doesn’t. If you are working to develop a culture at work or at home, this is a must read!
Chapter titles are: Introduction – When Two Plus Two Equals Ten. Skill One: Build Safety 1. The Good Apples 2. The Billion-Dollar Day When Nothing Happened 3. The Christmas Truce, the One-Hour Experiment, and the Missileers 4. How to Build Belonging 5. How to Design for Belonging 6. Ideas for Action Skill Two: Share Vulnerability 7. “Tell Me What You Want, and I’ll Help You” 8. The Vulnerability Loop 9. The Super-Cooperators 10. How to Create Cooperation in Small Groups 11. How to Create Cooperation with Individuals 12. Ideas for Action Skill Three: Establish Purpose 13. Three Hundred and Eleven Words 14. The Hooligans and the Surgeons 15. How to Lead for Proficiency 16. How to Lead for Creativity 17. Ideas for Action Epilogue
**My friend, Pastor Dave Holmes, compiled this cooaboratively after realizing we were reading the same book without ever having talked about it. We both agree it’s THAT good!**
Introduction:
“We focus on what we can see—individual skills. But individual skills are not what matters. What matters is the interaction.” Pg. xvii
“Their interactions appear smooth, but their underlying behavior is riddled with inefficiency, hesitation, and subtle competition.” Pg. xvii
“Culture is a set of living relationships working toward a shared goal. It’s not something you are. It’s something you do.” Pg. xx.
Skill 1: Build Safety:
Chapter 1: The Good Apples
3 Questions with Belonging: Are we connected? Are we safe here? What’s our future with these people?
“Safety is not mere emotional weather but rather the foundation on which strong culture is built.” Pg. 6
“When you ask people inside highly successful groups to describe their relationship with one another, they all tend to choose the same word. This word is not friends or team or tribe or any other equally plausible term. The word they use is family. What’s more, they tend to describe the feeling of those relationship in the same way.” Pg. 6-7
“There’s a teamwork that goes way beyond team and overlaps into the rest of people’s lives (Joe Negron, KIPP Charter Schools).” Pg. 7
Case Study #1 – Nick (bad apple) vs. Jonathon (pgs. 3-8)
Jonathan’s group succeeds not because its members are smarter but because they are safer. We don’t normally think of safety as being so important. We consider safety to be the equivalent of an emotional weather system—noticeable but hardly a difference maker. But what we see here gives us a window into a powerful idea. Safety is not mere emotional weather but rather the foundation on which strong culture is built. The deeper questions are, Where does it come from? And how do you go about building it?
When you ask people inside highly successful groups to describe their relationship with one another, they all tend to choose the same word. This word is not friends or team or tribe or any other equally plausible term. The word they use is family.
Interactions that accompany “family-like” groups:
Close physical proximity (often in circles), Profuse amounts of eye contact, Physical touch (handshakes, fist bumps, hugs), Lots of short, energetic exchanges (no long speeches), High levels of mixing; everyone talks to everyone, Few interruptions, Lots of questions, Intensive, active listening Humor, laughter Small, attentive courtesies (thank-yous, opening doors, etc.), physically addictive.
“Belonging Cues are behaviors that create safe connection in groups. They include, among others, proximity, eye contact, energy, mimicry, turn taking, attention, body language, vocal pitch, consistency of emphasis, and whether everyone talks to everyone else in the group.” Pgs. 10-11
“Belonging cues possess three basic qualities:
• Energy: They invest in the exchange that is occurring
• Individualization: They treat the person as unique and valued
• Future orientation: They signal the relationship will continue” pg. 11
“The key to creating psychological safety, as Pentland and Edmondson emphasize, is to recognize how deeply obsessed our unconscious brains are with it. A mere hint of belonging is not enough; one or two signals are not enough. We are built to require lots of signaling, over and over. This is why a sense of belonging is easy to destroy and hard to build.” Pg. 12
“Overall, Pentland’s studies show that team performance is drive by five measurable factors:
1. Everyone in the group talks and listens in roughly equal measure, keeping contributions short.
2. Members maintain high levels of eye contact, and their conversations and gestures are energetic.
3. Members communicate directly with one another, not just with the team leader.
4. Members carry on back-channel or side conversations within the team.
5. Members periodically break, go exploring outside the team, and bring information back to share with the others.” Pg. 14
“Group performance depends on behavior that communicates one powerful overarching idea: We are safe and connected.” Pg. 15
Chapter 2: The Billion-Dollar Day When Nothing Happened
“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
“Cohesion happens not when members of a group are smarter but when they are lit up by clear, steady signals of safe connection.” Pg. 26
Chapter 3: The Christmas Truce, the One-Hour Experiment, and the Missileers
“Belonging cues have to do not with character or discipline but with building an environment that answers basic questions: Are we connected? Do we share a future? Are we safe?” pg. 44
Chapter 4: How to Build Belonging
Case Study #2 – San Antonio Spurs (pgs. 48-54)
“He delivers two things over and over: He’ll tell you the truth, with no bullshit, and then he’ll love you to death.” Pg. 52
“They could pull us apart, but he makes sure that everybody feels connected and engaged to something bigger.” Pg. 53
“Hug ’em and hold’em” is the way Popovich often puts it to his assistant coaches. “We gotta hug’em and hold’em.” Pg. 53-54
“Much of that connection happens around the dinner table. The Spurs eat together approximately as often as they play basketball together.” Pg. 54
“They are energized and engaged, but at their core their members are oriented less around achieving happiness than around solving hard problems together.” Pg. 55
“But how do Popovich and other leaders manage to give tough, truthful feedback without causing side effects of dissent and disappointment? What is the best feedback made of?” pg. 55
“Researchers discovered that one particular form of feedback boosted student effort and performance so immensely that they deemed it ‘magical feedback.’” Pg. 56
“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
“His [Popovich] communications consist of three types of belonging cues:
1. Personal, up-close connection (body language, attention, and behavior that translates as I care about you).
2. Performance feedback (relentless coaching and criticism that translates as We have high standards here).
3. Big-picture perspective (larger conversations about politics, history, and food that translate as Life is bigger than basketball).” Pg. 56-57
“Every dinner, every elbow touch, every impromptu seminar on politics and history adds up to build a relational narrative: you are part of this group. This group is special. I believe you can reach those standards.” Pg. 57
Chapter 5: How to design for Belonging
Case Study #3 – Zappos - Hsieh MacGyvered (pg. 61-68)
“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
“‘This place is like a greenhouse,’ Hsieh says. ‘In some greenhouses, the leader plays the role of the plant that every other plant aspires to. But that’s not me. I’m not the plant that everyone aspires to be. My job is to architect the greenhouse.’” Pg. 67
“He is leveraging the Allen Curve. His projects tend to succeed for the same reason the creative cluster projects succeeded: Closeness helps create efficiencies of connection. The people in his orbit behave as if they are under the influence of some kind of drug because, in fact, they are.” Pg. 72
“The key characteristic of the Allen Curve is the sudden steepness that happens at the eight-meter mark….But as Allen shows, our brains do not operate logically.” Pg. 71
“For the vast majority of human history, sustained proximity has been an indicator of belonging—after all, we don’t get consistently close to someone unless it’s mutually safe.” Pg. 72
Chapter 6: Ideas for Actions
“Amy Edmondson has studied psychological safety in a wide variety of workplaces. ‘I used to not think about whether I was making people safe at all,’ she says. ‘Now I think about it all the time, especially at the beginning of any interaction, and then I constantly check, especially if there’s any change or tension. I bend over backward to make sure people are safe.’”
“Creating safety is about dialing in to small, subtle moments and delievering targeted signals at key points.” Pg. 75
How?
1. Overcommunicate Your Listening
“When I visited the successful cultures, I kept seeing the same expression on the faces of listeners. It looked like this: head tilted slightly forward, eyes unblinking, and eyebrows arched up. Their bodies were still, and they leaned toward the speaker with intent. The only sound they made was a steady stream of affirmations—yes, uh-huh, gotcha—that encouraged the speaker to keep going, to give them more. ‘Posture and expression are incredibly important,’ said Ben Waber, a former PhD student of Alex Pentland’s who founded Humanyze, a social analytics consulting firm. ‘It’s the way we prove that we’re in sync with someone.’ Relatedly, it’s important to avoid interruptions. The smoothness of turn taking, as we’ve seen, is a powerful indicator of cohesive group performance. Interruptions shatter the smooth interactions at the core of belonging.” Pg. 75
2. Spotlight Your Fallibility Early On—Especially If You’re a Leader
“In any interaction, we have a natural tendency to try to hide our weaknesses and appear competent. If you want to create safety, this is exactly the wrong move. Instead, you should open up, show you make mistakes, and invite input with simple phrases like ‘This is just my two cents.’ ‘Of course, I could be wrong here.’ ‘What am I missing?’ ‘What do you think?’” pg. 76
“To create safety, leaders need to actively invite input.” Pg. 77
3. Embrace the Messenger
“One of the most vital moments for creating safety is when a group shares bad news or gives tough feedback. In these moments, it’s important not simply to tolerate the difficult news but to embrace it. ‘You know the phrase ‘Don’t shoot the messenger’?’ Edmondson says. ‘In fact, it’s not enough to not shoot them. You have to hug the messenger and let them know how much you need that feedback. That way you can be sure that they feel safe enough to tell you the truth next time.’” Pg. 77
4. Preview Future Connection
“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
5. Overdo Thank-Yous
“When you enter highly successful cultures, the number of thank-yous you hear seems slightly over the top…. it has less to do with thanks than affirming the relationship… response. In other words, a small thank-you caused people to behave far more generously to a completely different person. This is because thank-yous aren’t only expressions of gratitude; they’re crucial belonging cues that generate a contagious sense of safety, connection, and motivation.” Pgs. 79-81
6. Be Painstaking in the Hiring Process
7. Eliminate Bad Apples
“The groups I studied had extremely low tolerance for bad apple behavior and, perhaps more important, were skilled at naming those behaviors.” Pg. 81
8. Create Safe, Collision-Rich Spaces
9. Make Sure Everyone Has a Voice
“Ensuring that everyone has a voice is easy to talk about but hard to accomplish. This is why many successful groups use simple mechanisms that encourage, spotlight, and value full-group contribution. For example, many groups follow the rule that no meeting can end without everyone sharing something.” Pg. 83
10. Pick Up Trash
“This is what I would call a muscular humility—a mindset of seeking simple ways to serve the group. These actions are powerful not just because they are moral or generous but also because they send a larger signal: We are all in this together.”
11. Capitalize on Threshold Moments
“When we enter a new group, our brains decide quickly whether to connect. So successful cultures treat these threshold moments as more important than any other.” Pg 86
“Of course, threshold moments don’t only happen on day one; they happen every day. But the successful groups I visited paid attention to moments of arrival. They would pause, take time, and acknowledge the presence of the new person, marking the moment as special: We are together now.” Pg 87
12. Avoid giving Sandwich Feedback
“In the cultures I visited, I didn’t see many feedback sandwiches. Instead, I saw them separate the two into different processes. They handled negatives through dialogue, first by asking if a person wants feedback, then having a learning-focused two-way conversation about the needed growth.” Pg. 87
13. Embrace Fun
“This obvious one is still worth mentioning, because laughter is not just laughter; it’s the most fundamental sign of safety and connection.” Pg. 88
Skill 2: Share Vulnerability
Chapter 7: Tell Me What You Want and I’ll Help You
Case Study #1 - The crew of Flight 232 (pgs. 91-97)
“During their interactions after the explosion, the makeshift crew of Flight 232 communicated at a rate of more than sixty notifications per minute. Some of the interactions consisted of big, open-ended questions, mostly asked by Haynes. How do we get the [landing] gear down?…Anybody have any ideas? These are not the kinds of questions one would normally expect a captain to ask. In fact, they’re the opposite. Normally, a captain’s job in an emergency is to be in command and to project capability and coolness. Yet over and over Haynes notified his crew of a very different truth: Your captain has no idea what is going on or how to fix it. Can you help?” pg. 96
“They demonstrated that a series of small, humble exchanges—Anybody have any ideas? Tell me what you want, and I’ll help you—can unlock a group’s ability to perform. The key, as we’re about to learn, involves the willingness to perform a certain behavior that goes against our every instinct: sharing vulnerability.” Pg. 97
“When you watch highly cohesive groups in action, you will see many moments of fluid, trusting cooperation.” Pg. 98
“If you look closely, however, you will also notice something else. Sprinkled amid the smoothness and fluency are moments that don’t feel so beautiful. These moments are clunky, awkward, and full of hard questions. They contain pulses of profound tension, as people deal with hard feedback and struggle together to figure out what is going on. What’s more, these moments don’t happen by accident. They happen by design.” Pg. 98
“So here’s how we’ll know if you had a good day,” Reinhardt continued. “If you ask for help ten times, then we’ll know it was good. If you try to do it all alone…” His voice trailed off, the implication clear—It will be a catastrophe.” Pg. 100
Chapter 8: The Vulnerability Loop
“Imagine that you and a stranger ask each other the following two sets of questions.
SET A Questions:
• What was the best gift you ever received and why?
• Describe the last pet you owned.
• Where did you go to high school?
• What was your high school like?
• Who is your favorite actor or actress?
SET B Questions:
If a crystal ball could tell you the truth about yourself, your life, the future, or anything else, what would you want to know?
Is there something that you’ve dreamed of doing for a long time?
Why haven’t you done it?
What is the greatest accomplishment of your life?
When did you last sing to yourself?
To someone else?” pg. 102
“At first glance, the two sets of questions have a lot in common. Both ask you to disclose personal information, to tell stories, to share. However, if you were to do this experiment (its full form contains thirty-six questions), you would notice two differences. The first is that as you went through Set B, you would feel a bit apprehensive. Your heart rate would increase. You would be more uncomfortable. You would blush, hesitate, and perhaps laugh out of nervousness. (It is not easy, after all, to tell a stranger something important you’ve dreamed of doing all your life.)” pg. 103
“The second difference is that Set B would make you and the stranger feel closer to each other—around 24 percent closer than Set A, according to experimenters.* While Set A allows you to stay in your comfort zone, Set B generates confession, discomfort, and authenticity that break down barriers between people and tip them into a deeper connection. While Set A generates information, Set B generates something more powerful: vulnerability.” Pg. 103
“People tend to think of vulnerability in a touchy-feely way, but that’s not what’s happening,…It’s about sending a really clear signal that you have weaknesses, that you could use help. And if that behavior becomes a model for others, then you can set the insecurities aside and get to work, start to trust each other and help each other. If you never have that vulnerable moment, on the other hand, then people will try to cover up their weaknesses, and every little microtask becomes a place where insecurities manifest themselves.” Dr. Jeff Polzer, pg. 104
“Polzer points out that vulnerability is less about the sender than the receiver. ‘The second person is the key.’” Pg. 104
“The interaction he describes can be called a vulnerability loop. A shared exchange of openness, it’s the most basic building block of cooperation and trust. Vulnerability loops seem swift and spontaneous from a distance, but when you look closely, they all follow the same discrete steps:
Person A sends a signal of vulnerability.
Person B detects this signal.
Person B responds by signaling their own vulnerability.
Person A detects this signal.
A norm is established; closeness and trust increase.” Pg. 104-105
Experiment 2 – The Give-Some Game pgs. 106-107
“You and another person, whom you’ve never met, each get four tokens. Each token is worth a dollar if you keep it but two dollars if you give it to the other person. The game consists of one decision: How many tokens do you give the other person?” pg. 106
“In one experiment, subjects were asked to deliver a short presentation to a roomful of people who had been instructed by experimenters to remain stone-faced and silent. They played the Give-Some Game afterward. You might imagine that the subjects who endured this difficult experience would respond by becoming less cooperative, but the opposite turned out to be true: the speakers’ cooperation levels increased by 50 percent. That moment of vulnerability did not reduce willingness to cooperate but boosted it.” Pg. 106
“The inverse was also true: Increasing people’s sense of power—that is, tweaking a situation to make them feel more invulnerable—dramatically diminished their willingness to cooperate.” Pg. 106
“In other words, the feelings of trust and closeness sparked by the vulnerability loop were transferred in full strength to someone who simply happened to be in the room.” Pg. 107
“Trust comes down to context. And what drives it is the sense that you’re vulnerable, that you need others and can’t do it on your own.” Pg. 107
“Normally, we think about trust and vulnerability the way we think about standing on solid ground and leaping into the unknown: first we build trust, then we leap. But science is showing us that we’ve got it backward. 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.” Pg. 107
“The signal being sent was the same: You have a role here. I need you.” Pg. 112
“Exchanges of vulnerability, which we naturally tend to avoid, are the pathway through which trusting cooperation is built.” Pg. 112
Chapter 9: The Super-Cooperators
--
Chapter 10: How to Create Cooperation in Small Groups
Case Study #2 – Seal Team 6 – pgs. 135-145
“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
“So how do you develop ways to challenge each other, ask the right questions, and never defer to authority? We’re just trying to create leaders among leaders. And you can’t just tell people to do that. You have to create the conditions where they start to do it.” Pg. 139
“During missions, Cooper sought opportunities to spotlight the need for his men to speak up, especially with newer team members.” Pg. 140
“Spending time together outside, hanging out—those help. One of the best things I’ve found to improve a team’s cohesion is to send them to do some hard, hard training. There’s something about hanging off a cliff together, and being wet and cold and miserable together, that makes a team come together.” Pg. 140
“One of the most useful tools was the After-Action Review (A.A.R.). Aar’s happen immediately after each mission and consist of a short meeting in which the team gathers to discuss and replay key decisions. AAR’s are not led by commanders but by enlisted men.” Pg. 140
“‘It’s got to be safe to talk,’ Cooper says. ‘Rank switched off, humility switched on. You’re looking for that moment where people can say, ‘I screwed that up.’ In fact, I’d say those might be the most important four words any leader can say: I screwed that up.’” Pg. 140-141
“But they succeeded because they understood that being vulnerable together is the only way a team can become invulnerable.” Pg. 145
“‘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
Chapter 11: How to Create Cooperation with Individuals
Case Study #3 – The Nyquist Method—pgs. 146-
“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
“If we think of successful cultures as engines of human cooperation, then the Nyquistss are the spark plugs.” Pg. 149
“She gathers the group and asks questions designed to unearth tensions and help the group gain clarity about themselves and the project. The word she uses for this process is surfacing.” Pg. 150
“‘I like the word connect,’ Givechi says. ‘For me, every conversation is the same, because it’s about helping people walk away with a greater sense of awareness, excitement, and motivation to make an impact. Because individuals are really different. So you have to find different ways to make it comfortable and engaging for people to share what they’re really thinking about. It’s not about decisiveness—it’s about discovery. For me, that has to do with asking the right questions the right way.’” Pg. 151
“When she speaks she constantly links back to you with small phrases—maybe you’ve had an experience like this…Your work might be similar…The reason I was pausing there was…--that provide a steady signal of connection. You find yourself comfortable opening up, taking risks, telling the truth.” Pg. 152
“The interesting thing about Givechi’s question is how transcendently simple they are. They have less to do with design than with connecting to deeper emotions: fear, ambition, motivation.” Pg. 153
“‘The word empathy sounds so soft and nice, but that’s not what’s really going on,’ says Njoki Gitahi, a senior communication designer. ‘What Roshi does requires a critical understanding of what makes people tick, and what makes people tick isn’t always being nice to them. Part of it is that she knows people so well that she understands what they need. Sometimes what they need is support and praise. But sometimes what they need is a little knock on the chin, a reminder that they need to work harder, a nudge to try new things. That’s what she gives.’” Pg. 153-154
Case Study #4 - Dr. Carl Marci – Non-Western Healers
“‘What these healers all had in common was that they were brilliant listeners. They would sit down, take a long patient history, and really get to know their patients,’” Marci says. ‘They were all incredibly empathic people who were really good at connecting with people and forming trusting bonds. So that’s when I realized that the interesting part wasn’t the healing but the listening, and the relationship being formed. That’s what we needed to study.’” Pg. 154
“Marci called these moments concordances. ‘Concordances happen when one person can react in an authentic way to the emotion being projected in the room,’ Marci says. ‘It’s about understanding in an empathic way, then doing something in terms of gesture, comment, or expression that creates a connection.’” Pg. 155
“‘It’s not an accident that concordance happens when there’s one person talking and the other person listening,’ Marci says. ‘It’s very hard to be empathic when you’re talking. Talking is really complicated, because you’re thinking and planning what you’re going to say, and you tend to get stuck in your own head. But not when you’re listening. When you’re really listening, you lose time. There’s no sense of yourself, because it’s not about you. It’s all about this task—to connect completely to that person.’” Pg. 157
Chapter 12: Ideas for Action
#1 Make Sure the Leader Is Vulnerable First and Often: pg. 158-159
Laszlo Bock, former head of People Analytics at Google, recommends that leaders ask their people three questions:
What is one thing that I currently do that you’d like me to continue to do?
What is one thing that I don’t currently do frequently enough that you think I should do more often?
What can I do to make you more effective?
“‘The key is to ask not for five or ten things but just one,’ Bock says. ‘That way it’s easier for people to answer. And when a leader asks for feedback in this way, it makes it safe for the people who work with them to do the same. It can get contagious.’” Pg. 160
#2 Overcommunicate Expectations: “The successful groups I visited did not presume that cooperation would happen on its own. Instead, they were explicit and persistent about sending big, clear signals that established those expectations, modeled cooperation, and aligned language and roles to maximize helping behavior.” Pg. 160
#3 Deliver the Negative Stuff in Person: “If you have negative news or feedback to give someone—even as small as a rejected item on an expense report—you are obligated to deliver that news face-to-face.” Pg. 161
#4 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
#5 Listen Like a Trampoline: Good listening is about more than nodding attentively; it’s about adding insight and creating moments of mutual discovery. The most effective listeners do four things:
1. They interact in ways that make the other person feel safe and supported
2. They take a helping, cooperative stance
3. They occasionally ask questions that gently and constructively challenge old assumptions
4. They make occasional suggestions to open up alternative paths
“…the most effective listeners behave like trampolines. They aren’t passive sponges. They are active responders, absorbing what the other person gives, supporting them, and adding energy to help the conversation gain velocity and altitude.” Pg. 163
#6 In Conversation, Resist the Temptation to Reflexively Add Value: “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. Skilled listeners do not interrupt with phrases like Hey, here’s an idea or Let me tell you what worked for me in a similar situation because they understand that it’s not about them. They use a repertoire of gestures and phrases that keep the other person talking. ‘One of the things I say most often is probably the simplest thing I say,’ says Givechi. ‘Say more about that.’” Pg. 163
#7 Use Candor-Generating Practices Like AAR’s, BrainTrusts, and Red Teaming.
Good AAR Questions:
1. What were our intended results?
2. What were our actual results?
3. What caused our results?
4. What will we do the same next time?
5. What will we do differently? Pg. 164
Before Action Review Questions:
1. What are our intended results?
2. What challenges do we anticipate?
3. What have we or others learned from similar interactions?
4. What will make us successful this time? Pg. 164
“Red Teaming is a military-derived method for testing strategies; you create a ‘red team’ to come up with ideas to disrupt or defeat your proposed plan. The key is to select a red team that is not wedded to the existing plan in any way, and to give them freedom to think in new ways that the planners might no thave anticipated.” Pg. 165
#8 Aim for Candor; Avoid Brutal Honesty: “By aiming for candor—feedback that is smaller, more targeted, less personal, less judgmental, and equally impactful—it’s easier to maintain a sense of safety and belonging in the group.” Pg. 166
#8 Embrace the Discomfort: “One of the most difficult things about creating habits of vulnerability is that it requires a group to endure two discomforts: emotional pain and a sense of inefficiency.” Pg. 166
#9 Align Language with Action: “Many highly cooperative groups use language to reinforce their interdependence.” Pg. 166
#10 Build a Wall Between Performance Review and Professional Development: “…It’s more effective to keep performance review and professional development separate.” Pg. 166
#11 Use Flash Mentoring: “It is exactly like traditional mentoring—you pick someone you want to learn from and shadow them—except that instead of months or years, it lasts a few hours.” Pg. 167
#9 Make the Leader Occasionally Disappear: “Several leaders of successful groups have the habit of leaving the group alone at key moments.” Pg. 167
Skill 3: Establish Purpose
Chapter 13: Three Hundred and Eleven Words
Johnson & Johnson 311word credo: “We believe our first responsibility is to doctors, nurses, and patients; to mothers and fathers and all others who use our products and services. In meeting their needs everything we do must be of high quality. We must constantly strive to reduce our costs in order to maintain reasonable prices. Customers’ orders must be serviced properly and accurately.” Pg. 171
“How can a handful of simple, forthright sentences make such a difference in a group’s behavior?” Pg. 177
“We’ve seen how small signals—You are safe, We share risk here—connect people and enable them to work together as a single entity. But now it’s time to ask: What’s this all for? What are we working toward?” pg. 178
“When I visited successful groups, I noticed that whenever they communicated anything about their purpose or their values, they were as subtle as a punch in the nose.” Pg. 178
“Purpose isn’t about tapping into some mystical internal drive but rather about creating simple beacons that focus attention and engagement on the shared goal. Successful cultures do this by relentlessly seeking ways to tell and retell their story. To do this, they build what we’ll call high-purpose environments.” Pg. 180
“High purpose environments are filled with small, vivid signals designed to create a link between the present moment and a future ideal. They provide two simple locators that every navigation process requires: Here is where we are and Here is where we want to go.” Pg. 180
“Mental contrasting. Envision a reachable goal, and envision obstacles. This method works, triggering significant changes in behavior and motivation….Mental constrasting has also been shown to improve the ability to interact positively with strangers, negotiate deals, speak in public, manage time, improve communication, and perform a range of other skills.” Pg. 181
“They moved as one because they were attuned to the same clear signal of the Credo resonating through the group. We believe our first responsibility is to doctors, nurses, and patients; to mothers and fathers and all others who use our products and services. The difficult choices they made weren’t really all that difficult. They were closer to a reflex.” Pg. 183
Robert Rosenthal study of 1965 classified change into four categories:
1. Warmth (the teachers were kinder, more attentive, and more connective)
2. Input (the teachers provided more material and input for learning)
3. Response-Opportunity (the teachers called on the students more often, and listened more carefully)
4. Feedback (the teachers provided more , especially when the student made a mistake) pg. 185
“They created a high-purpose environment, flooded the zone with signals that linked the present effort to a meaningful future, and used a single story to orient motivation the way that a magnetic field orients a compass needle to true north: This is why we work. Here is where you should put your energy.” Pg. 187
Chapter 14: The Hooligans and the Surgeons
“One of the best measures of any group’s culture is its learning velocity—how quickly it improves its performance of a new skill.” Pg. 193
Harvard Researcher Amy Edmonson 1998 studied learning a new form of heart surgery. Which team would learn the fastest and most effectively? Five factors or signals rose to the top:
1. Framing – “Successful teams conceptualized MICS as a learning experience that would benefit patients and the hospital. Unsuccessful teams conceptualized MICS as an add-on to existing practices.” Pg. 195
2. 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
3. Rehearsal – “Successful teams did elaborate dry runs of the procedure, preparing in detail, explaining the new protocols, and talking about communication. Unsuccessful teams took minimal steps to prepare.” Pg. 196
4. Explicit Encouragement to Speak Up – “Successful teams were told by team leaders to speak up if they saw a problem; they were actively coached through the feedback process. The leaders of unsuccessful teams did little coaching, and as a result team members were hesitant to speak up.” Pg 196
5. Active Reflection – “Between surgeries, successful teams went over performance, discussed future cases, and suggested improvements. For example, the team leader at Mountain Medical wore a head-mounted camera during surgery to help facilitate discussion and feedback. Unsuccessful teams tended not to do this.” Pg. 196
“This is why high-purpose environments work. They are about sending not so much one big signal as a handful of steady, ultra-clear signals that are aligned with a shared goal. They are less about being inspiring and more about being consistent. They are found not within big speeches so much as within everyday moments when people can sense the message: this is why we work; this is what we are aiming for.” Pg. 199
Chapter 15: How to Lead for Proficiency
Danny Meyer and great restaurants…
“That’s when I knew I had to find a way to build a language, to teach behavior. I could no longer just model the behavior and trust that people would understand and do it. I had to start naming stuff….started a conversation about values: What were they really about? What did they stand for? Who came first?” pg. 206
“…I realized that how we treat each other is everything. If we do that well, everything else will fall into place.” Pg. 207
“‘You have priorities, whether you name them or not,’ he says. ‘If you want to grow, you’d better name them, and you’d better name the behaviors that support the priorities.’” Pg. 209
“A simple set of rules that stimulate complex and intricate behaviors benefitting customers….Creating engagement around a clear, simple set of priorities can function as a lighthouse, orienting behavior and providing a path toward a goal.” Pg. 210
So how does a handful of catchphrases and a list of priorities produce smooth and proficient performance?
Slime mold illustration pgs. 210-212
“…many of Meyer’s catchphrases focus on how to respond to mistakes. You can’t prevent mistakes, but you can solve problems graciously. If it ain’t broke, fix it. Mistakes are like waves; servers are like surfers. The road to success is paved with mistakes well handled.” Pg. 212
“The trick is not just to send the signal, but to create engagement around it.” Pg. 212
Chapter 16: How to Lead for Creativity
Illustration of creative leader Ed Catmull, president and CEO of Pixar.
“This is because all creative projects are cognitive puzzles involving thousands of choices and thousands of potential ideas, and you almost never get the right answer right away. Building purpose in a creative group is not about generating a brilliant moment of breakthrough but rather about building systems that can churn through lots of ideas in order to help unearth the right choices.” Pg. 219
How does Catmull know when a team is succeeding? “‘Mostly you can feel it in the room,’ he says. ‘When a team isn’t working, you see defensive body language, or you see people close down. Or there’s just silence. The ideas stop coming, or they can’t see the problems.’” Pg. 220
“We put in new systems and they learned new ways of interacting….building creative purpose isn’t really about creativity. It’s about building ownership, providing support, and aligning group energy toward the arduous, error-filled, ultimately fulfilling journey of making something new.” Pg. 226
Chapter 17: Ideas for Action
Many successful cultures are forged in crisis.
“The difference with successful cultures seems to be that they use the crisis to crystallize their purpose.” Pg. 228
A few ideas to help build purpose:
1. Name and rank your priorities
2. Be 10x as clear about your priorities as you think you should be.
3. Figure out where your group aims proficiency and where it aims for creativity.
“Skills of proficiency are about doing a task the same way, every single time. They are about delivering machine-like reliability, and they tend to apply in domains in which the goal behaviors are clearly defined, such as service. Building purpose to perform these skills is like building a vivid map: You want to spotlight the goal and provide crystal-clear directions to the checkpoints along the way…” Pg. 230.
5. Embrace the Use of Catchphrases
6. Measure what Really Matters
7. Use Artifacts “….They all reinforce the same signal: this is what matters.” Pg. 232
8. Focus on Bar-Setting Behaviors “One challenge of building purpose is to translate abstract ideas (values, mission) into concrete terms.” Pg. 233
Epilogue
“Every story should have a VOW: voice, obstacles, and wanting. The bigger the problem, the better the story. You guys are creative athletes—you have to help each other get better.” Pg. 241