SYNOPSIS

New York Times bestselling author Danny Coyle unlocks the secrets of highly effective group cultures by studying the finest teams across various industries in the world, including the Navy SEAL’s, Pixar Studios, and the San Antonio Spurs.

The Culture Code presents the three most important master skills required to transform your organizational culture.

TOP 20 INSIGHTS

1. Group cultures are extremely powerful. A Harvard study of over two hundred companies shows that strong culture increases net income 765 percent over ten years. Cultures are not predestined. They are a set of living relationships oriented towards a common goal. Group culture has more to do with what teams do than what they are.

2. The collective feeling of safety is the foundation on which strong cultures are built. Belonging cues are non-verbal signals that humans use to create safe connections in groups. The three basic qualities of belonging cues are 1) the energy invested in the exchange, 2) valuing individuals, and 3) signaling that the relationship will sustain in the future.

3. Evolution has conditioned our unconscious brain to be obsessed with sensing danger and craving social approval. Belonging cues, when repeated, create psychological safety and help the brain shift into connection mode. Psychological safety is easy to destroy and hard to build.

4. “Magical Feedback” enables leaders to give uncomfortable feedback without creating resentment. It creates strong belonging cues by doing three things: 1) It tells the person that they are a part of the group, 2) it reminds them that group has high standards, and 3) it assures them that they can reach these standards.

5. Collisions are serendipitous personal encounters that form community and encourage creativity and cohesion. Designing for physical proximity and collisions creates a whole set of effects including increased connections and a feeling of safety.

6. When someone joins a group, their brains are deciding whether to connect or not. Successful cultures capitalize on these threshold moments to send powerful belonging cues and bring a sense of ongoing togetherness and collaborative harmony to existing and incoming team members alike.

7. The key to building trusting cooperation in groups is sharing vulnerability. The best teams intentionally create awkward, painful interactions to discuss hard problems and face uncomfortable questions. It is these interactions that produce the cohesion and trust necessary for fluid, organic cooperation.

8. Navy SEALs do After Action Reviews(AAR) where each mission in discussed excruciating detail to share vulnerability and model future behavior. When given orders to use helicopters to eliminate Bin Laden, they repeatedly simulated crashes and did AAR’s. When a helicopter crash-landed during the actual mission the teams adapted instantly. The mission was over in 38 minutes.

9. Vulnerability does not come after trust is established. Instead, exchanges of vulnerability are the pathway through which trust is built. Group cooperation is built by repeated patterns of sharing such moments. In other words, “Being vulnerable together is the only way a team can become invulnerable”.

10. Moments of concordance happen when a person responds authentically to the emotion projected in the room. This empathetic response establishes a connection. The key moments of concordance happen when a person is actively listening.

11. “I screwed that up” is among the most important things a leader can say. Sharing of vulnerability as exemplified by a leader makes the team feel it’s safe to be honest in this group.

12. The two most critical moments in group formation are the first vulnerability and the first disagreement. The way these moments are handled sets a clear template that prefaces either divisive competition or constructive collaboration in the future.

13. Candor-generating practices where the team sits down together to exchange candid feedback help them share vulnerability and understand what works. These practices create a shared mental model for the groups to navigate future challenges.

14. High-purpose environments create strong narratives that connect the present to a meaningful future. In 1998, Harvard researchers found that the inexperienced team from Mountain Medical Centre learnt a surgical technique much faster than an experienced team from Chelsea Hospital. This Mountain Medical Centre team’s narrative constantly reinforced how this technique would help serve patients better.

15. The value of narratives and signals is not in their information but in their ability to orient the team towards the larger goal. They are less about inspiration and more about being consistent.

16. High Proficiency Environments have clear tasks that require consistent and effective performance. High Creativity Environments, on the other hand, focus on innovation. These require different types of beacon signals to building purpose.

17. Leaders of high proficiency groups focus on ordering priorities and creating a clear, simple set of practices that function as a lighthouse aligning everyday behavior with the core organizational purpose.

18. Pixar’s President Ed Catmull says that every creative project starts as a disaster. Building purpose in High Creativity Environments requires systems that consistently churn out ideas. Every Pixar movie is put through multiple BrainTrust meetings where senior producers and directors give frank feedback. This generates fresh ideas while maintaining the creative team’s project ownership.

19. An employee survey across 600 companies by Inc. magazine revealed that less than 2 percent of employees could name the company’s top three priorities. Leaders of high-performance groups consistently over-communicate priorities painting them on walls, inserting them into speeches and making them a part of everyday language.

20. Bar-setting behaviors are simple tasks that define group identity and set high standards for the group. They help organizations translate abstract values into concrete everyday tasks that embody and celebrate the purpose of the group.

SUMMARY

When we think of culture we usually think of groups as the sum of individual skills. In reality, however, nothing could be more wrong. A cohesive group culture enables teams to create performance far beyond the sum of individual capabilities. Strong cultures are created by a specific set of skills that can be learnt and practiced. In this book, Danny Coyle boils it down to three specific skills: Build Safety, Share Vulnerability, and Establish Purpose.