Culture Code by Daniel Coyle is going to be my last book on work culture for a while (I’ve had a heavy dose of this topic in the first quarter of 2021). The book starts with a story of how a band of kindergarteners repeatedly defeated MBAs and lawyers on a simple task that required collaboration. The idea the author puts forward is that we tend to confuse “status management” with collaboration. When you see the lawyers and MBAs talk and collaborate, they are speaking the right words but what they are really doing is navigating a political structure and not creating a space where collaborative problem solving can happen. That is the crux of this book.
This book looks at 8 high performing groups (including a band of jewel thieves) to decipher the core of their culture. The criteria for selecting them is quite simple. They were in the top 1% of their domain, have succeeded with a range of people and their culture has been admired by others. I love the way the book is organised in terms of 3 key skills that lead to creation of high performance cultures. Each skill is discussed with stories that display how the specific skill led to an amazing level of cooperation (Coyle calls this “working as one brain”), risk taking and result orientation. Along with the stories, there are practical lessons and tips that you can use immediately to foster this particular skill in your team. The practical tips made this a really good read for me and in this post I try to summarise my key takeaways.
Skill 1 – Safety
Psychological safety has been talked about as one of the most important aspect of high performing cultures. Feelings of safety enable risk taking and exhibiting curiosity that enable innovation. Coyle talks about the concept of ‘belonging’ and how it is the most important aspect of making people feel safe. Belonging can come from treating people like a family and showing that we are connected beyond the immediate goals. Discussing complex political issues, interests outside work and the world at large helps people feel that we are all connected to things much bigger.
Here are some specific cues that you as leaders or team members can send which make people feel safe.
1. Listen carefully and don’t just wait for your turn to speak. While responding speak in short affirmations. Communicate repeatedly that you want to listen to them and make every effort to ensure all voices are heard.
2. Recognise your own mistakes and say things like ‘I was wrong about that’ and mean it. Safe environments are places where people regularly show they are willing to be proven wrong.
3. Hug the messenger of bad news. It is the opposite of shooting down the messenger and when a workplace welcomes bad news it shows that it is willing to ‘get it right’.
4. Preview future connections and show people how they will grow and connect to others in the future (where they are now and where they can be).
5. As many Thank you’s as is possible. More gratitude everyday is directly linked to safety in the workplace.
6. Eliminate bad apples quickly. This is probably the hardest thing to execute. The high performing New Zealand rugby team the Black Caps have a no dickheads rule and we’d all do well to follow it in our workplaces.
7. Embrace fun and laugh together. The simplest way to connect as a group is to laugh together and enjoy the lighter moments of each day.
Skill 2 – Share vulnerability
Leaders of teams who seem to be “working as one brain” constantly show that they are vulnerable. They say things like ‘anyone got any ideas’ and avoid things like ‘i got this..’. There are simple ways in which leaders can lay the foundation for spaces that make it easy for people to feel they can remain vulnerable and achieve more as a team. Here are some very simple tips that establish vulnerability in a team.
1. Express vulnerability as a leader by saying things like ‘I was nervous’ or ‘I am not sure if we are going to win this contract’ etc.
2. Listen like a trampoline. I loved this point about listening. The idea is to not act as a bouncing board and instead dig in and surface more hidden things and concerns. We need to do this with repetition with each repetition reveal more hidden issues and insecurities and the discourse elevates with more information.
3. Don’t jump to adding value by capturing easy ideas. When people come to us to talk, we focus on giving them low hanging solutions. Instead we should focus on listening and asking questions and saying things like ‘tell me more about that’. Coyle calls this “establishing a scaffold of thoughtfulness”. Ensuring you know all there is to know before you jump the gun on solving problems.
4. Overcommunicate expectations. That helps in creating a structure for collaboration and safety that come from knowing what is and is not out of bounds.
5. Using the first disagreement to establish what we are in it for. We need to ensure we clarify what is more important to us. To be right or win an argument or to explore and get it right together.
6. Do AARs (after action reviews or postmortems). Review the intended results with actual results. Gauge what caused it and then question what will we do same or different the next time. This ensures everyone is open to relooking at their jobs regularly and question their own decisions.
7. Align language with the true nature of work. We often confuse naming things as tokenism but words matter. Navy pilots don’t land on aircraft carriers, they are ‘recovered’. Ideo calls their managers ‘community leaders’ and not project managers. In Pixar, people don’t comment on things, they ‘plus things’. All these phrases and terminologies signal their true nature and it helps people value actions correctly.
Skill 3 – Establish purpose
Clear purpose is the backbone of highly motivated teams. The key to establishing purpose is to relentlessly stress upon the story. Telling and retelling why we are doing something is a great way to establish a shared purpose. The author talks about a framework of establishing something called a ‘high purposeful state’. It is actually quite simple. The idea is to talk about where we are and where we want to go. Here are some ways you work on becoming more purposeful.
1. Communicate your top 3 priorities. This could be in terms of what are we about and where are we destined to go.
2. Establishing purpose is different for different tasks. Doing it for something which is proficiency driven, like say a customer care team and something which is creativity driven, like say a team of animators is very different. Dividing your work or tasks and people into proficiency and creativity is a good starting point. Proficiency needs crystal clear models of excellence with repeatable if-then rules and creativity needs autonomy and recognising wins.
3. Catchphrases help make things obvious. This sounds a little corny but simple catch phrases like ‘always smile when you pick up the phone’ drive action based clarity. They also help set up clear reminders and crisp nudges.
4. Focus on what matters and prevent distraction that forward unwanted behaviours. The best example of this is Etsy’s Tony Hsieh’s disregard for call volumes and instead focus on a metric called PEC (personal emotional connection) for call centres . This was obviously more subjective and harder to capture but it highlighted the need to establish real connection with callers and it formed the backbone of support operations at Etsy.
5. Use artefacts to reinforce the purpose. Navy seals have real battle artefacts in their training areas and this reinforces that this is what matters. You can also design your office space or work stations with specific items that highlight and underscore the real world implication of what you do.
6. Spotlight a single task or effortful behaviour. A great example of this was that of an ice hockey team that focussed on backchecking drills. It focussed on a 40 for 40 behavior that meant the players had to back check a puck every single time they could (40/40) as that is the kind of team they were.
I run a startup called Harmonize. We are hiring and if you’re looking for an exciting startup journey, please write to jobs@harmonizehq.com. Apart from this blog, I tweet about startup life and practical wisdom in books.