Why this book: It was selected by the All American Leadership Faculty reading group that I participate, to read and discuss. We were able to reach out to Dan Coyle and he joined us for our on-line discussion – a real treat.  After our session, as a group we decided that The Culture Code should become a corner stone of AAL’s leadership curriculum.

Summary in 3 Sentences:   Daniel Coyle has studied a multitude of successful organizations which seem to have great organizational cultures, in which people enjoy their work, working with each other to succeed as a team.   His analysis finds that these cultures all share three qualities: a shared sense of psychological safety, shared willingness to be vulnerable with each other, and a sense of shared purpose.   The book is broken down into three sections, each describing his research and a multitude of stories and anecdotes that support that particular quality.

My Impressions:  One of the best books I’ve read on creating a strong and sustainable culture – what I and my friends in All American Leadership have called an “elite” culture.  The principles are sound, the stories are compelling, and it is well told – easily accessible, easy and fun to read. I think it is a good companion book to Switch by Chip and Dan Heath – which uses a different, yet related 3-part taxonomy of motivating people to become more engaged in their work and in their team.  I have told a number of people that The Culture Code and Legacy are the two books I”ve read that best speak to what works in the cultures of the best SEAL Teams.

Coyle approaches his subject using three fundamental principles of great cultures: Safety, Vulnerability, and Purpose.  He breaks the chapters in the book into those three sections with vignettes and research to substantiates his case.  His main point:  A sense of safety opens the door to creativity and engagement;  the willingness of people within an organization to be vulnerable and honest with each other (doesn’t honesty make us vulnerable?) brings them together and creates trust; and finally Purpose – a goal, a value, a raison d’être that brings the team together, energizes the team, and facilitates overcoming personal differences.

He uses several examples of successful groups who exemplify the principles he espouses for great cultures.  He uses  stories from airline pilots dealing with a critical situation, the Houston Spurs (NBA team,) Pixar, (the famous animated movie company,) the Navy SEALs, Gramercy Tavern, (a highly successful restaurant chain in NYC,)  Saturday Night Live writers and comedians, the Panthers, (a group of Serbian international criminals,) Bell Labs, IDEO, Johnson and Johnson, Portuguese police, hospitals, and more.  He even shares what we humans can learn from starlings flying in a flock, and slime mold moving toward the light.

In each of his examples,  successful groups demand completely candid feedback, in which people are willing to share vulnerability and failure with each other, in order to make the group, the process, the result better.  In one telling passage, a “newby” on the job is facing her first day in a challenging position.  Her boss tells her, “So here’s how we’ll know if you had a good day.  If you ask for help ten times, then we’ll know it was good. If you try to do it all alone…(his voice trails off, the implication was clear – it will be a catastrophe.)”

I found his description of “the Nyquist method” particularly intriguing.  It is named for a quiet and unflamboyant engineer in Bell Labs the mid 20th century named Harry Nyquist.  Nyquist he describes as “the most important person in one of the most creative places in history (who) turned out to be a person almost everyone would overlook.”  148  People who play the Nyquist role in an organization radiate a safe, nurturing vibe, possess deep knowledge that spans many domains, and have a knack for asking questions that ignite motivation and ideas.  He calls them spark plugs, roving catalysts, with great influence, but whose impact is often underappreciated.

The final section on shared purpose offered ideas I found insightful and useful.  Coyle talks about how the “story” or the narrative of an organization can create mental models and the high-purpose environment that can create and reinforce an upward “virtual spiral.”  Connecting people to the story, the larger purpose, can be very powerful.  He talks about “Learning velocity” as a key indicator of a group’s culture.

In that section on purpose, he connects what works for humans with what works for one of the simplest organisms on earth – slime molds.  The biological analogies are instructive.  With slime mold, if there’s no food, the cells connect with one another; if connected, they stay connected and move toward the light; if they reach the light, stay connected and climb.  211 And from that very simple example, he describes decision-making heuristics that tie to the common purpose, that serve as guidelines in complex or emotionally challenging situations.

I loved this book , the message, Coyle’s voice and style. He concludes each of the three sections with key action take-aways to answer the so-what question.  I recommend this book to anyone interested in improving their organization’s culture.

Possible Weakness:  In The Culture Code, Dan Coyle doesn’t anticipate counter-arguments nor offer counter-examples, or potential mine-fields to his thesis.   Where or when, or in what organizational contexts might efforts to create psychological safety or shared vulnerability not work, or even be counterproductive?  I recall in Leadership BS   the author Jeffery Pfeffer gave examples of MBA students leaving business school with what he called “feel good” concepts about good leadership, and then trying to apply them in the “real world” and getting hammered in the dog-eat-dog, hard-nosed, results-oriented cultures that are most common in the corporate world.   Pfeffer argued that academics who teach such idealistic concepts, without addressing the realities of most Machiavellian cultures, are doing a disservice to their students.  Coyle doesn’t address how and why well-intentioned efforts to change toxic cultures led by self-serving leaders may fail, and even hurt the lives and careers of those promoting the changes.  He doesn’t point out that many or most leaders simply won’t be willing to adopt the practices he advocates –  no matter how much they may admire the ideal.   In his book Everybody Matters, Bob Chapman alludes to the difficulties he had bringing similar idealistic principles into the culture of Barry-Wehmiller,  but I also didn’t feel he gave adequate space to the many challenges of applying similar concepts.

NOTABLE QUOTES 

(I include a lot of quotes below, because I expect to be referring to this book a lot and having these quotes readily available will facilitate my review when I come back to it.  I hope they help others as well.  Page numbers from the 2018 hardback edition.)

• When business school students appear to be collaborating, in fact they are engaged in a process psychologist call “status management.”  Who is in charge? Is it okay to criticize someone’s idea?  What are the rules here?  xvii
• The actions of the kindergartners appear disorganized on the surface. But when you view them as a single entity, their behavior is efficient and effective. They are not competing for status.   xvii…
• We’ll see that being smart is overrated, that showing fallibility is crucial, and that being nice is not nearly as important as you might think.  xix

Skill 1: BUILD SAFETY

• Most of all he radiates an idea that is something like, Hey, this is all really comfortable and engaging, and I’m curious about what everybody else has to say.…Jonathan succeeds without taking any of the actions we normally associate with a strong leader. 6
• “Human signaling looks like other animal signaling,…you can measure interest levels, who the alpa his, who’s cooperating, who’s mimicking.  9
• The proto-language that humans use to form safe connection is made up of belonging cues.  (which are) behaviors that create safe connection in groups….their function is to answer the ancient ever-present questions glowing in our brains: Are we safe here? What’s our future with these people? Are there dangers lurking?  10-11
• Belonging cues possess three basic qualities: 1.Energy; 2. Individualization; 3. Future Orientation. These cues add up to a message that can be described with a single phrase: You are safe here. They seek to notify our ever-vigilant brains that they can stop worrying about dangers and shift into connection mode, a condition called psychological safety. 11
• It’s possible to predict performance by ignoring all the informational content in the exchange and focusing on a handful of belonging cures.  13
• Team performance is driven by five measurable factors:
  • Everyone in the group talks and listens in roughly equal measure, keeping contributions short.
  • Members maintain high levels of eye contact, and their conversations and gestures are energetic,
  •  Members communicate directly with one another not just with the team leader.
  • Members carry on back-channel or side conversations within the team.
  • Members periodically break, go exploring outside the team, and bring information back to share with the others.
• These factors ignore every individual skill and attribute we associate with high-performing groups, and replace them with behaviors we would normally consider so primitive as to be trivial.  14-15
• Words are noise.  Group performance depends on behavior that communicates one powerful overarching idea: We are safe and connected.  15
• Most cultures followed one of three basic models: The star model (hiring the best people), the professional model (developing the best skill sets), and the commitment model (developing shared values and strong emotional bonds.)  The commitment model consistently led to the highest rates of success. 21
• When you receive a belonging cue, the amygdala switches roles and starts to use its immense unconscious neural horsepower to build and sustain your social bonds.  25
• When it was over Popovich (coach of Houston Spurs) asked questions, and those questions are always the same: personal, direct, focused on the big picture. What did you think of it?  What would you have done in that situation? … The message he wants to deliver: There are bigger things than basketball to which we are all connected. 53
• The Spurs eat together approximately as often as they play basketball together.  54
• One misconception about highly successful cultures is that they are happy, lighthearted places. This is mostly not the case.  They are energized and engaged, but at their core their members are oriented less around achieving happiness than around solving hard problems together.  55
• Magical feedback: “I am giving you these comments because I have very high expectation and I know that you can reach them.” This sentence contains three separate cues: 1. You are part of this group. 2. This group is special; we have high standards here; 3. I believe you can reach those standards.   These signals provide a clear message:  Here is safe place to give effort.  56
• Tony Hsieh: ” I try to help things happen organically.  If you set things up right, the connection happens.” 65
• Beneath Hsieh’s unconventional approach  lies a mathematical structure based on what he calls collisions. Collisions – defined as serendipitous personal encounters – are, he believes, the lifeblood of any organization, the key driver of creativity, community, and cohesion.  66
• Tony Hsieh: Meet people.  Ask them who else you should meet.  You’ll figure it out. 68
• The most successful projects were those driven by sets of individuals who formed what Allen called “clusters of high communicators.” 69
• Proximity functions as a kind of connective drug.  Get close, and our tendency to connect lights up….we don’t get consistently closed to someone unless it’s morally safe.

• Build Safety – Ideas for Action: 75-88

  • Overcomucate your listening (w body language, and avoid interruptions)
  • Spotlight your fallibility early on – especially if you’re a leader  – it’s an invitation to create a deeper connection
  • Embrace the Messenger – That way they’ll feel safe to tell you the truth next time. .
  • Preview Future Connection – create small but telling connections between now and  a vision of the future.
  • Overdo Thank-Yous – it has less to do with the thanks than affirming the relationship. Expressions of gratitude are crucial belonging cues.
  • Be painstaking in the hiring process Deciding who’s in and who’s out is the most powerful signal any group sends. The best organizations approach their hiring accordingly.
  • Eliminate Bad Apples.  Show low tolerance for bad behavior.  
  • Create Safe, Collisions-rich spaces Create spaces that maximize interaction and “chance” collisions. 
  • Make sure Everyone has a voice.  – creates belonging by placing power and trust in the hands of the people doing the work.
  • Pick up Trash – it shows an attention to detail, a serving mindset, and that no matter who we are, we have to take care of the spaces we inhabit
  • Capitalize on Threshold Moments – especially in on-boarding and anytime anyone or the organization enters a new phase.  Create a positive sense of expectation and commitment.
  • Avoid giving Sandwich feedback –  Two separate conversations – Negative thru personal dialogue; Positives through ultra clear bursts of recognition and praise.
  • Embrace Fun. Laughter is the most fundamental sign of safety and connection.  “If you ain’t having fun doing it, you ain’t doing it right.”

Skill 2: SHARE VULNERABILITY`

• At some level, we intuitively know that vulnerability tends to spark cooperation and trust.  103
• “People then to think of vulnerably in a touchy-feely way, but that’s not what’s happening. It’s about sending a really clear signal that you have weaknesses, that you could use help.”  (Jeff Polzera professor of organizational behavior at Harvard.  104
• Increasing people’s sense of power – that is, tweaking a situation to make them feel more invulnerable – dramatically diminished their willingness to cooperate.  106
• The link between vulnerability and cooperation applies not only to individuals, but also to groups.  106
• In other words, the feelings of trust and closeness sparked by the vulnerability loop were transferred in full strength to someone who simply happened to  be in the room.  The vulnerability loop, in other words, is contagious. 107
• Vulnerability doesn’t’ come after trust – it precedes it.  107
• Most of us instinctively see vulnerability was a condition to be hidden.  But science shows that when it comes to creating cooperation, vulnerability is not a risk but a psychological requirement.  111
• Each (vulnerability) loop was different, yet they shared a deeper pattern: an acknowledgement of limits, a keen awareness of the group nature of the endeavor. The signal being sent was the same: You have a role here.  I need you.  112
• Cooperation ..is a group muscle that is built according to a specific pattern of repeated interaction, and the pattern is always the same: a circle of people engaged in the risky, occasionally painful, ultimately rewarding process of being vulnerable together.  113
• A Harold (an improv comedy game) asks you to disobey every natural instinct in your brain and instead to give yourself selflessly to the group. In short, it’s a comedy version of Log PT (used by the SEALs in basic training.)  128
• In other words, the Panthers were a little bit like comedians doing a  Harold, or SEALs doing Log PT – small teams solving problems in a constant state of vulnerability and interconnection.
• “One of the best things I’ve found to improve a team’s cohesion is to send them to do some hard, hard training. There’s something about hanging off a cliff together, and being wet and cold and miserable together that makes a team come together ”  Dave Cooper, retired SEAL Master Chief  140
• The goal of an AAR is not to excavate truth for truth’s sake, or to assign credit and blame, but rather to build a shared mental model that can be applied to future missions.  141
• “When we talk about courage, we think it’s going against an enemy with a machine gun.  The real courage is seeing the truth and speaking the truth to each other. People never want to be the person who says, ‘Wait a second, what’s really going on here?’  But inside the squadron, that is the culture, and that’s why we’re successful.”  Dave Cooper, retired SEAL Master Chief 145
• It’s not about decisiveness – it’s about discovery. For me, that has to do with asking the right questions the right way.”  Roshi Givechi of IDEO  151
• “I’m more of a nudger.  I nudge the choreography and try to create the conditions for good things to happen.”  Roshi Givechi of IDEO 152
• She (Givechi) isn’t trying to drag you somewhere, ever.  She’s truly seeing you from your position, and that’s her power.  153
• “It’s very hard to be empathic when you’re talking… But now when you’re listening. When you’re really listening, you lose time. There’s no sense of yourself, because it’s not about you.  It’s all about this task – to connect completely to that person.” Dr Carl Marci, neurologist 157

• Share Vulnerability – Ideas for Action  158-16

1. Make sure the Leader is Vulnerable First and Often  by small, frequently repeated moments of vulnerability. Leaders should ask their people 3 questions;
   • What is one thing I do I should continue to do
   • -What one thing should I do more often.
   • -What can I do to make you more effective.
2. Overcommunicate Expectations  to cooperate.  Let your people know that the more complex he problem, the more help you’ll need to solve it.
3. When Forming New Groups, Focus on Two Critical Moments – The first vulnerability and the first disagreement.
4. Listen like a trampoline. The most effective listeners do four things:
   • Interact to make the other person feel safe and supported
   • Take a helping, cooperative stance
   • Occasionally ask questions that gently and constructively challenge old assumptions
   • Make occasional suggestions to open up alternative paths.
5. In Conversation, Resist the Temptation to Reflexively Add Value by forgoing easy opportunities to offer solutions and make suggestions. Instead, often use the phrase,  “Say more about that.”
6. Use Candor- Generating Practices like AARs, Brain Trusts, and Red Teaming to include using a team of experienced leaders with no formal authority over the project to offer frank and open critique.
7. Aim for Candor; Avoid Brutal Honesty – to avoid people feeling hurt, attacked or demoralized.
8. Embrace the Discomfort – a group with the habit of vulnerability has learned to endure emotional pain and  a sense of inefficiency.
9. Align Language with Action. Find ways to adjust language to reinforce inter-dependence.
10. Build a Wall Between Performance Review and Professional Development. Performance review is judgmental and threatening.  Development is about identifying and supporting opportunities for growth
11. Use Flash Mentoring. Unlike traditional mentoring lasting months or  years, flash mentoring is only a few hours.
12. Make the Leader Occasionally Disappear – Huddle the group for a purpose, and then don’t show up; let them take charge of what needs to be done.

Skill 3: ESTABLISH PURPOSE 

• Purpose isn’t about tapping into some mystical internal drive but rather about creating simple beacons that focus attention and engagement on the shared goal.  Successful cultures do this by relentlessly seeking ways to tell and retell their story. To do this, they build what we’ll call high-purpose environments.  180
• High-purpose environments…provide two simple locators that every navigation process requires: Here is where we are and Here is where we want to go.  180
• It’s called mental contrasting…Envision a reachable goal, and Envision the obstacles. 181
• That shared future could be a goal or a behavior.. it doesn’t matter.  What matters is establishing this link (where we are, where we want to go) and consistently creating engagement around it. What matters is telling the story.  182
• One of the measures of any group’s culture is its learning velocity – how quickly it improves its performance of a new skill.  193
• Why do some groups succeed at learning new skills and others fail?  There are real time signals that show how team members connect (or not) in implementing the new skills in their work. These signals consisted of fife basic types: 195-196
  • Framing – conceptualizing new skills as  learning experiences, as opposed to add-ons to existing practices.
  • Roles – successful teams are told explicitly why their individual and collective skills were important.
  • Rehearsal – successful teams did elaborate preparation and dry runs of the new skills.
  • Explicit encouragement to speak up – Problems were posted out and team members  were coached thru the feedback process
  • Active Reflection — to discuss applicability of lessons learned.
• (What mattered) was simple steady pulse of real-time signals that channeled attention toward the larger goal… (flooding) the environment with the narrative links between what they were doing and what it meant.  197
• High proficiency environments help a group deliver a well-defined, reliable performance, while high-creativity environments help a group create something new.  (This) highlights two basic challenges facing any group: consistency and innovation.  199
• A bad interaction: “Either they’re disinterested – ‘I’m Just doing my job…or they’re angry at the other person or the situations. And if I were to see that, I would know that there’s a deeper prelim here, because the number-one job is to take care of each other. I  didn’t always know that , but I know it now.” Danny Meyer CEO of Gramercy restaurants.  203
• “That’s when I keen 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.”  Danny Meyer CEO, Gramercy restaurants.  206
• “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 stet of rules that stimulate complex and intricate behaviors benefiting customers.”  Susan Salgado about a Gramercy restaurant.  209
• Slime molds, honeybees, ants, and many other species use decision-making heuristics…heuristics provide guidance by creating if/then scenarios in vivid, memorable way… (creating) a conceptual beacon, creating situational awareness and providing clarity in times of potential confusion.  212
• “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.” Ed Catmull president and cofounder of Pixar.  220
• Each gathering brings team members together in a  asafew, flat, high-candor environment and lets them point out problems and generate ideas that move the team stepwise, toward a better solution.
• Ed-isms (referring to Ed Catmull, president of Pixar)
  • Hire people smarter than you.
  • Fail early, Fail often
  • Listen to everyone’s ideas.
  • Face toward the problems.
  • B-level work is bad for your soul.
  • It’s more important to invest in good people than in good ideas.
• The fundamental difference between leading for proficiency and leading for creativity: Myer (of Gramercy) needs people to know and feel exactly what to do, while Catmull (of Pixar) needs people to discover that for themselves. 223
• (To create a great creative culture) “It takes time. 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 on another.”  Ed Catmull president of Pixar 226
• Building creative purpose isn’t really about creativity.  It’s about building ownership, providing support, and aligning group energy toward the arduous, error-filled, ultimately fulfilling journey of making something new.  226

• Establish Purpose – Ideas for Action 227-235

  • Successful cultures seem to use the a to crystallize their purpose and to be the crucible that helps the group discover what it could be. 228
  • High-purpose environments don’t descend on groups from on high; they are dug out of the ground, over and over, as a group navigates its problems together and evolves to meet the challenges of a fast-changing world.  228

1. Name and Rank Your Priorities. Most successful groups end up with five or fewer priorities, and not coincidentally, in-group relationships are at the top of the list.
2. Be Ten Times as Clear About Your Priorities as You Think You Should Be. Most executives are stunned at what a small percentage of the people in their organizations know their top 3 priorities.
3. Figure Out Where Your Group Aims for Proficiency and Where it Aims for Creativity.
   • Proficiency purpose: Machine-like reliability requires clear models of excellence, high-repetition, specific rules of thumb, and highlighting success at the fundamentals.
   • Creativity Purpose:  Carefully attend to team composition and dynamics, protect the team’s creative autonomy, make it safe to fail, give honest but respectful feedback, celebrate initiative.
4. Embrace the Use of Catchphrases – simple, action-oriented, forthright, and even cheesy are easy to remember, and to repeat.
5. Measure What Really Matters.  Creat simple universal measures that place focus on what matters.  Goal is not precision, but to create awareness and align behaviors toward the group’s mission.
6. Use Artifacts. Display articles and items that represent the values and purpose of the organization.
7. Focus on Bar-Setting Behaviors. Spotlight a single task and use it to define the group’s identity and to set the bar for expectations.