The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups

by Daniel Coyle

Align Language with Action:

How do we revision our language to target our goals?

players. However, during about one time-out a month, the Spurs coaches huddle for a time-out…and then never walk over to the players.

Coaches in the stands-captains leading practices

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.

Envision a reachable goal, and envision the obstacles. The thing is, as Oettingen discovered, this method works, triggering significant changes in behavior and motivation.

What is a process goal that you have to prepared Tran for the season? What obstacles night you face?

We normally think about them as being intrinsic to a person. People are either motivated or they’re not; accordingly, we describe motivation with terms like desire or heart. But in these experiments, motivation is not a possession but rather the result of a two-part process of channeling your attention: Here’s where you’re at and Here’s where you want to go.

An athlete or student is not inherently lazy. They have just lost sight of where they are and where they want to go, but what about their why? Or the driving force to get them to that point?

stories do not cloak reality but create it, triggering cascades of perception and motivation. The proof is in brain scans: When we hear a fact, a few isolated areas of our brain light up, translating words and meanings. When we hear a story, however, our brain lights up like Las Vegas, tracing the chains of cause, effect, and meaning.

These are special kids, destined to succeed—

Harvard test Busbee and parents

Rosenthal classified the changes into four categories. 1. Warmth (the teachers were kinder, more attentive, and more connective) 2. Input (the teachers provided more material 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)

Maybe the parents will respond with involvement and a sense of dedication to the program

Each time the student did something ambiguous, the teacher gave the student the benefit of the doubt. Each time the student made a mistake, the teacher presumed that the student needed better feedback.

clear beacon of purpose,

One of the best measures of any group’s culture is its learning velocity—how quickly it improves its performance of a new skill.

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.

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.

Active reflection: Between surgeries, successful teams went over performance, discussed future cases, and suggested improvements.

When you walk into a Meyer restaurant, you feel that you are being cared for. This feeling radiates from the surroundings and the food but most of all from the people, who approach each interaction with familial thoughtfulness.

“I’m watching for what happens right afterward, and I’m looking for their energy level to go up,” he says. “They connect to clean up the problem, and the energy level goes either up or down, and if we’re doing our job right, their energy level will go up.” He puts his fists together, and then makes an explosion gesture with his fingers. “They are creating uplifting energy that has nothing to do with the task and everything to do with each other and what comes next. It’s not really that different from an ant colony or a beehive. Every action adds on to the others.”

That’s when I knew that 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.”

This is crucial but i don't know where to start. How do you address issues with hokie language? i know it need to become organic to take shape how doweget buy in?

Skunking is spraying negative energy into the workplace, as skunks do when they’re frightened.

Don't skunk the pool deck!!!!!

“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.”

What would be our priorities? Developing well prepared future leaders & pioneers. Creating a love for process over performance Creating authentic & deep relationships

home, family, warmth.

“If you’re not growing anywhere, you’re not going anywhere,”

“It’s an honor, not a job,”

“No shortcuts,”

“Work hard, be nice,”

“It’s totally hokey and corny. And then you start to see how they work, and you start using them in regular life. Then all of a sudden they’re not corny—they’re just part of the oxygen.”

They create purpose by generating a clear beam of signals that link A (where we are) to B (where we want to be).

We made some mistakes with this building, and now we know that, and we are slightly better because we know that.

Vulnerability! But demonstrates a commitment to growth

The project started out as a complete disaster, but then at the last moment, somehow we managed to rescue it.

Not always sunny and rainbows. But unmitigated commitment to nangating the course

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.

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.”

Replace "idea" with set,

And in the postmortems, off-site retreats that Catmull organizes after a film is completed, the team members capture and share the biggest takeaways from the process.

What could we do as a post season retreat??? Conference meet at s.m.u.?

Fail early, fail often.

Face toward the problems.

B-level work is bad for your soul.

he celebrates when a group takes initiative without asking permission

“It takes time,” he says. “You have to go through some failures and some screw-ups, and survive them, and support each other through them. And then after that happens, you really begin to trust one another.”

We put in some new systems, and they learned new ways of interacting.

successful cultures seems to be that they use the crisis to crystallize their purpose.

Name and Rank Your Priorities:

Most successful groups end up with a small handful of priorities (five or fewer), and many, not coincidentally, end up placing their in-group relationships—how they treat one another—at the top of the list. Statements of priorities were painted on walls, stamped on emails, incanted in speeches, dropped into conversation, and repeated over and over until they became part of the oxygen.

Embrace the Use of Catchphrases:

Measure What Really Matters:

create simple universal measures that place focus on what matters.

Use Artifacts:

Focus on Bar-Setting Behaviors:

First you are clumsy; then after a while, you get better.

“What Worked Well/Even Better If” format for the feedback sessions: