The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups

by Daniel Coyle

As one missileer told me, “Every deviation is treated as if it’s violating a presidential launch order. Make a critical error? You’re done. You’re the shitty guy. There is no such thing as doing an outstanding job. You either do it right, or you get punished. If you admit a mistake or ask for help, you ruin your reputation. Everyone walks around like scared puppies. So you get a feedback loop. Something bad happens, everybody screams and yells, then they institute more evaluations, which makes everybody more demoralized, more tired, so you make more mistakes.” It all adds up to a perfectly designed storm of antibelonging cues, where there is no connection, no future, and no safety. Seen in this way, missileer culture is not a result of an internal lack of discipline and character but of an environment custom-built to destroy cohesion. Indeed, the former launch officers I spoke with were smart, eloquent, thoughtful people who seemed to have found successful and fulfilling lives once they left the broken missileer culture. The difference wasn’t in the content of their character. It was in the lack of safety and belonging in their culture.