The Culture Code by Daniel Coyle

Summary

Company culture, or in general group culture is playing a big part in how groups perform, overcome obstacles and survive or even thrive over time. A good culture can make a group efficient, allow people within the group to have fun, enjoy their time in there and make them likely to stay and attract more people. A bad culture can lead a very similar group with a similar idea to collapse and achieve close to nothing.

This has some obvious interests for companies; and startups in particular are really keen on promoting their culture, supposed to be better than the ones of older and bigger companies. This book look into a wide range of groups in different areas (sport teams, military teams, companies) in order to find the components of great cultures, and bring them down to a few principles and skills to build within a culture in order to give all the chances to the group to thrive.

Detailed Summary

Skill 1 - Build Safety

People kind of naturally want to feel like they belong to groups and are ready to give a lot to a group they feel good in. Of course, anyone is part of a lots of groups at any given time, from family to friend to country, etc. So how do you make the group you share with them, the one they feel so good about that they will get a lot from this group and give a lot back to it. A lot of it seems to be based on how safe they feel in it; or in a slightly broader way, how good they feel.

The natural example is the family, which people often tend to pick as the group they care the most about or feel the most natural in. So you want to reproduce that family feeling. Make people feel like they can be themselves, express freely, try and experiment things. But also that they are values, appreciated and cared about. Then they will give the same to everyone else in the group.

Actions and principles to keep in mind related to building safety:

• Over-communicate Your Listening: Of course you want to listen to people in your group because they have very valuable insights, but you also want to make sure you show them you’re listening, that will create a virtuous circle encouraging them to share more ideas and so more good ones.
• Spotlight Your Fallibility Early On—Especially If You’re a Leader
• Embrace the Messenger
• Preview Future Connection: Show people how the future of the group looks like if everyone keeps pushing for its success, find examples of past successes from the group or similar groups which have already succeeded.
• Overdo Thank-Yous
• Be Painstaking in the Hiring Process: That’s a chance a family doesn’t have, but only a few bad members of a group can ruin the vibe and the conditions you are working hard to build. So don’t let them in, or if you do, get them out as soon as possible as per the next point.
• Eliminate Bad Apples
• Create Safe, Collision-Rich Spaces
• Make Sure Everyone Has a Voice
• Pick Up Trash
• Capitalize on Threshold Moments: Entering the group is an obvious one, but look for others as well, acknowledge the people and make them feel their responsibilities but also potential in the group.
• Avoid Giving Sandwich Feedback: Clearly separate the dialogue around negative feedback and the praises about positive one. This way you can keep focus on the action points in the first part and take away the full positivity of the second one.
• Embrace Fun

Skill 2 - Share Vulnerability

After making sure people feel safe and good in the group, you want to make sure they can share their vulnerabilities. That will make bonds between people even stronger as time goes by as they will share their problems, getting a better understanding of each other and helping each other.

Of course, it take a lot for someone to start sharing personal things with a new group. The best way to start is to have someone from the group start to show it is common practice, and it’s even a stronger sign if it’s a leader. It doesn’t have to be a formal process, but just setting it as the norm to be ok with showing flaws to others.

Some popular examples of leaders making themselves as vulnerable as their team are from the army where a leader would endure the same exercises as the team rather than just telling them to do it while watching from the side.

Obviously that is not reproducible in every context. One very interesting exercise which seem to be a good alternative is the improvisation game called “The Harold”. It is supposed to be a hard game among the improvisation ones, but taken with the right approach, it can make everyone “failing together” in a productive way for the group relationships.

The building rules of the Harold are sharing a surprisingly big common part with the principles of the book:

1. You are all supporting actors.
2. Always check your impulses.
3. Never enter a scene unless you are needed.
4. Save your fellow actor, don’t worry about the piece.
5. Your prime responsibility is to support.
6. Work at the top of your brains at all times.
7. Never underestimate or condescend to the audience.
8. No jokes.
9. Trust! Trust your fellow actors to support you; trust them to come through if you lay something heavy on them; trust yourself.
10. Avoid judging what is going down except in terms of whether it needs help, what can best follow, or how you can support it imaginatively if your support is called for.
11. LISTEN.

Actions and principles to keep in mind related to sharing vulnerability:

• Make Sure the Leader Is Vulnerable First and Often
• Over-communicate Expectations
• Deliver the Negative Stuff in Person
• When Forming New Groups, Focus on Two Critical Moments: The first vulnerability and the first disagreement. These are defining how the group reacts to obstacles. Do people try to win the argument to be “the one” who solved it, or do they just all aim at getting the best outcome?
• Listen Like a Trampoline: Listening is not being passive, you need to show your listening and understanding, ask questions and clarification if needed and suggest opening ideas without taking over the conversation from the one speaking.
• In Conversation, Resist the Temptation to Reflexively Add Value: Let the one speaking go through their whole idea and if you spot a better one, try to guide them to it by asking right questions. Or, if you have to suggest it yourself plainly, do wait to have the shown as much support as you could before.
• Use Candor-Generating Practices like AARs, BrainTrusts, and Red Teaming
• Aim for Candor; Avoid Brutal Honesty
• Embrace the Discomfort: If the team feels bad about something, face it, talk through it and learn together, don’t swift it under the carpet or wait until people have moved on.
• Align Language with Action
• Build a Wall Between Performance Review and Professional Development: Performance reviews can be good or bad depending the times, professional development should be a continuously ongoing process, not affected by temporary target goals.
• Use Flash Mentoring
• Make the Leader Occasionally Disappear

Skill 3 - Establish Purpose

The two first skill are mostly about making people belong to the group or team, but once you have these great creative people in the team, you want to make sure they are aligned about where to go, otherwise the group as a whole might not evolve very well. You need to give them a purpose to follow and they will achieve great things in this direction.

Of course, that purpose also applies back to the selection to enter the group and to thrive in the team, one must agree and even embrace the purpose.

Actions and principles to keep in mind related to establishing purpose:

• Name and Rank Your Priorities
• Be Ten Times as Clear About Your Priorities as You Think You Should Be: It’s amazingly easy for people to misinterpret or rather re-interpret something within their own world view. So what you mean to communicate to 10 people might end up understood in 10 different ways. That’s why you want to insist on what are the priorities and make sure it was understood the way you meant it.
• Figure Out Where Your Group Aims for Proficiency and Where It Aims for Creativity
• Embrace the Use of Catchphrases
• Measure What Really Matters
• Use Artifacts
• Focus on Bar-Setting Behaviors