The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups

by Daniel Coyle

“That night put me on a different path,” Cooper says. “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. So how do you create conditions where that doesn’t happen, where you develop a hive mind? How do you develop ways to challenge each other, ask the right questions, and never defer to authority? We’re 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.”

The administrators studied those ten scientists, hunting for the common thread. Did the supercreatives share the same specialty? The same educational background? The same family background? After considering and discarding dozens of possible ties, they discovered a connection—and it didn’t have to do with who the supercreatives were. It had to do with a habit that they shared: the habit of regularly eating lunch in the Bell Labs cafeteria with a quiet Swedish engineer named Harry Nyquist.

(The best way to find the Nyquist is usually to ask people: If I could get a sense of the way your culture works by meeting just one person, who would that person be?

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.

The one thing that excites me about this particular opportunity is • I confess, the one thing I’m not so excited about with this particular opportunity is • On this project, I’d really like to get better at

Robert Bales, one of the first scientists to study group communication, discovered that while questions comprise only 6 percent of verbal interactions, they generate 60 percent of ensuing discussions.

Make Sure the Leader Is Vulnerable First and Often:

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?

Overcommunicate Expectations:

(CEO Tim Brown incessantly repeats his mantra that the more complex the problem, the more help you need to solve it.)

Little Book of IDEO,

Deliver the Negative Stuff in Person:

When Forming New Groups, Focus on Two Critical Moments:

Jeff Polzer, the Harvard Business School professor who studies organizational behavior (see Chapter 8), traces any group’s cooperation norms to two critical moments that happen early in a group’s life. They are: 1. The first vulnerability 2. The first disagreement

Listen Like a Trampoline:

In Conversation, Resist the Temptation to Reflexively Add Value:

Use Candor-Generating Practices like AARs, BrainTrusts, and Red Teaming:

One good AAR structure is to use five 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? Some teams also use a Before-Action Review, which is built around a similar set of questions: 1. What are our intended results? 2. What challenges can we anticipate? 3. What have we or others learned from similar situations? 4. What will make us successful this time?

Aim for Candor; Avoid Brutal Honesty:

Embrace the Discomfort:

Align Language with Action:

Many highly cooperative groups use language to reinforce their interdependence. For example, navy pilots returning to aircraft carriers do not “land” but are “recovered.” IDEO doesn’t have “project managers”—it has “design community leaders.” Groups at Pixar do not offer “notes” on early versions of films; they “plus” them by offering solutions to problems. These might seem like small semantic differences, but they matter because they continually highlight the cooperative, interconnected nature of the work and reinforce the group’s shared identity.

Build a Wall Between Performance Review and Professi...

Use Flash Mentoring:

Make the Leader Occasionally Disappear:

High-purpose environments are filled with small, vivid signals designed to create a link between the present moment and a future ideal. They provide the two simple locators that every navigation process requires: Here is where we are and Here is where we want to go. The surprising thing, from a scientific point of view, is how responsive we are to this pattern of signaling.

Step 1: Think about a realistic goal that you’d like to achieve. It could be anything: Become skilled at a sport, rededicate yourself to a relationship, lose a few pounds, get a new job. Spend a few seconds reflecting on that goal and imagining that it’s come true. Picture a future where you’ve achieved it. Got it? Step 2: Take a few seconds and picture the obstacles between you and that goal as vividly as possible. Don’t gloss over the negatives, but try to see them as they truly are. For example, if you were trying to lose weight, you might picture those moments of weakness when you smell warm cookies, and you decide to eat one (or three). That’s it. It’s called mental contrasting, and it seems less like science than the kind of advice you might come across on a late-night infomercial: Envision a reachable goal, and envision the obstacles.

the very soul of the corporation was watching us.”

The answer, Edmondson discovered, lay in the patterns of real-time signals through which the team members were connected (or not) with the purpose of the work. These signals consisted of five basic types: 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. 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. 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. 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. 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.

Note what factors are not on this list: experience, surgeon status, and organizational support.

High-proficiency environments help a group deliver a well-defined, reliable performance, while high-creativity environments help a group create something new. This distinction is important because it highlights the two basic challenges facing any group: consistency and innovation.

Meyer kept it up, steadily expanding and refining the language. “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.”

“The results indicate that Union Square Cafe achieves its differentiation strategy of ‘enlightened hospitality’ through a synergistic set of human resource management practices involving three key practices: selection of employees based on emotional capabilities, respectful treatment of employees, and management through a simple set of rules that stimulate complex and intricate behaviors benefiting customers.”

when I visited leaders of successful creative cultures, I didn’t meet many artists. Instead, I met a different type, a type who spoke quietly and tended to spend a lot of time observing, who had an introverted vibe and liked to talk about systems. I started to think of this type of person as a Creative Engineer.

When most people tell stories about their successful creative endeavors, those stories often go like this: The project started out as a complete disaster, but then at the last moment, somehow we managed to rescue it. This arc is attractive because it dramatizes the improbability of the rescue and thus places the teller in a flattering light. But Catmull is doing something profoundly different. He sees the disaster and the rescue not as improbable companions but as causally related. The fact that these projects start out as painful, frustrating disasters is not an accident but a necessity. 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.

“There’s a tendency in our business, as in all businesses, to value the idea as opposed to the person or a team of people,” he says. “But that’s not accurate. Give a good idea to a mediocre team, and they’ll find a way to screw it up. Give a mediocre idea to a good team, and they’ll find a way to make it better. The goal needs to be to get the team right, get them moving in the right direction, and get them to see where they are making mistakes and where they are succeeding.”

You’ll notice that, in contrast to Danny Meyer’s vivid, specific language, these are defiantly un-catchy, almost zen-like in their plainness and universality. This reflects the fundamental difference between leading for proficiency and leading for creativity: Meyer needs people to know and feel exactly what to do, while Catmull needs people to discover that for themselves.

Name and Rank Your Priorities:

Be Ten Times as Clear About Your Priorities as You Think You Should Be:

Figure Out Where Your Group Aims for Proficiency and Where It Aims for Creativity:

Ways to do that include: • Fill the group’s windshield with clear, accessible models of excellence. • Provide high-repetition, high-feedback training. • Build vivid, memorable rules of thumb (if X, then Y). • Spotlight and honor the fundamentals of the skill.

Some ways to do that include: • Keenly attend to team composition and dynamics. • Define, reinforce, and relentlessly protect the team’s creative autonomy. • Make it safe to fail and to give feedback. • Celebrate hugely when the group takes initiative.

Embrace the Use of Catchphrases:

Measure What Really Matters:

Use Artifacts:

Focus on Bar-Setting Behaviors:

David Black, my superb agent.