The Culture Code by Daniel Coyle Random House Business Books, published 2019
In 2019 Daniel Coyle published the follow up to his best-selling book “The Talent Code”
called “The Culture Code – The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups”
He had spent five years studying a diverse group of successful and some less successful organisations to see if
there were common traits between the successful ones and see whether their strong
cultures were based on a specific set of behaviours. Some of the teams featured included the
New Zealand All Blacks rugby team, Pixar film studios, the San Antonio Spurs NBA basketball team, Google and
the US Navy Seals special operations unit.
Many of the examples in the book look at how less than ideal situations were turned
around and how these were the catalyst for change within the organisation by utilizing
specific strategies to encourage collaboration and build trust.
Of course it turns out that there are a common set of behaviours at play within these
successful teams which form the three main sections of the book and are summarized as:
- Build Safety.
- Share Vulnerability.
- Establish Purpose.
At the end of each of these sections in the book there are a series of succinct ideas for
action.
Build Safety
Successful groups create an environment where members feel they belong and can take
risks without fear of embarrassment or punishment. Being part of a group is one of the
most basic deep rooted human needs and we generally thrive when we feel safe and
secure within a group. If you were around in pre-historic times and you were not part of a
tribe you probably wouldn’t survive for very long on your own, this profound need remains
embedded deep within our souls even today.
Individuals in the groups featured in the book are able to push the boundaries of what is
possible for both themselves and the group as a whole, safe in the knowledge they have
the support of their peers and superiors even if things don’t always go right.
Ideas for Action
- Overcommunicate your listening (communication can be both verbal and especially here non-verbal)
- Spotlight your fallibility early on, especially if you are a leader.
- Embrace the messenger – especially if they are bearing bad news.
- Preview future connection – providing “the dots” to be joined up towards the desired
outcome
- Overdo thanks yous
- Eliminate bad apples
- Create safe collision-rich spaces (places where people can interact)
- Make sure everyone has a voice.
- Pick up trash (it’s not so much the trash itself, more that showing nobody is above doing what may be considered menial tasks and one person’s selfless actions are for the benefit of the whole group. It is also showing that “this place matters”).
- Capitalise on threshold moments
- Avoid giving “sandwich feedback” – not the quality of snacks, but the notion of providing good news, bad news and then good news in one session is not ideal as it confuses the messages.
- Embrace fun
Share Vulnerability
High‑performing teams strengthen bonds by openly acknowledging weaknesses and asking
for help. In the course of the book the author provides several examples of where the
leaders have ruled with such an iron fist that group members are fearful of pointing out
things that are clearly and obviously wrong, leading to the detriment of the whole group.
By sharing vulnerability you can create an environment where players can feel more
comfortable and better about themselves. It doesn’t need to be sharing your life story, it
could be as simple as, for example, a coach where a drill isn’t running as you intended:
rather than berating the players for not understanding, simply acknowledging that you
hadn’t explained it clearly enough. It means that the players aren’t thinking they are in
some way stupid for not understanding. This plays alongside another concept –
“The message isn’t what is said, it is what is understood” which is a fundamental principle of
effective communication, emphasizing that the success of a message is measured by the
receiver’s interpretation rather than the sender’s intent. It highlights that communication is
a two-way process where meaning is “decoded” based on the listener’s filters, experiences,
and emotions.
An even more powerful signal in this example would then be if the coach asks the group for
suggestions for improving the situation.
As a coach it is tempting to show you have all the answers, and indeed you may well have
many of them, but the author puts forward the case to “Resist the temptation to
reflexively add value”. In the sports coaching context adding value could be telling a
player immediately what they did wrong. Instead, ask the player what they thought went
wrong and guide them through analysing their actions. This “Socratic Learning” style has
been shown to improve learning and athletes enable a level of self coaching.
Similarly, the concept to “make the leader occasionally disappear” also promotes the
idea of the team figuring things out for themselves without relying on their coaches.
Ideas for Action
- Overcommunicate expectations
- Deliver negative stuff in person
- In conversation, resist the temptation to reflexively add value.
- Make the leader occasionally disappear
- Aim for candor, avoid brutal honesty
- Align language with action
- Make sure the leader is vulnerable first and often.
Establish Purpose
Strong cultures constantly reinforce what they stand for and where they’re going. Quite
often a strong culture is created as a result of some form of crisis, at these moments the
group’s failings and the underlying causes will be in sharp focus allowing for a shared
understanding of how and a desire to improve.
This will involve going a lot deeper than what is happening visibly on the surface, it is this
probing towards what is driving that superficial level actions or behaviours that reveal, or
go towards defining, the true purpose.
The term “catch phrase” could get confused with short phrases that highlight a particular
coaching point like “palms to target” when setting as a kind of easily remembered
shorthand to trigger key coaching points which of course has an important place in
coaching.
But what I believe the author is getting at is a phrase that embodies the
organisation/team’s culture as he says “clear reminders, crisp nudges in the direction the
group wants to go”. An often quoted catch phrase comes from the early days of Facebook –
“Move Fast and Break Things”. Not a literal instruction but an internal mantra promoting a
culture of speed, experimentation, and innovation, even at the cost of stability. Another
one is from the NASA Jet Propulsion Labs which is “Dare Mighty Things”.
If not everybody is aware of, and aligned to, the group’s purpose and priorities it can often
become a cause of friction. As a coach or leader you need to be aware that no matter how
clear you are in your mind as to what the purpose and priorities of the group are, the
members of the group will be considerably less aware.
Again “The message isn’t what is said, it is what is understood” needs to be kept firmly
in mind and the ideas for action can serve as constant reminders and nudges.
Similarly, organisations will use “artifacts” as a reminder of where they have come from,
again at the NASA Jet Propulsion Labs they have a “picture” from one of the early missions;
it is in fact a list of numbers representing levels of light returned from one of their craft in a
painfully slow fashion, really slow serial fashion, in fact so slow, that while waiting one of
the engineers went into town, bought some crayons and coloured the numbers to
represent a different colour and form a recognisable picture. Both the assembled picture and the actual crayons are on display as a reminder of just how
far they have come since the early missions.
Ideas for Action
- Name and rank your priorities
- Be 10 times as clear about your priorities as you think you need to be
- Embrace the use of catch phrases
- Measure what really matters
- Use artifacts (items which symbolise what you are about or show that you belong)
- Focus on bar-setting behaviours
This is a fantastic book and while a lot of the stories relate to the corporate world there are
plenty of examples relating to, or easily transferable to sports teams. It is very readable and is
easy to drop in and out of the book.
by John Biddiscombe
VbDC staff
The author has an accompanying web site with numerous blog articles, the one below caught
my eye as it features John Kessel (of USA Volleyball) who is a bit of a legend in volleyball coaching
circles and beyond.
