The Culture Code
Part 1: Build Safety
Ch. 1: The good apples
Safety. Will Felps, Uni of South Wales. Organizational behavior. Negative archetypes (jerk, slacker, downer) Impact of “bad apples” (by a good actor) leads to 30-40% of group performance drop. Can be neutralized by a “good apple” who knows how to diffuse a situation with subtle behaviors (get closer, smile, listen, be curious, alert, inclusive).
Highly successful groups are familial (“family”, “friends”), special chemistry. We can feel it and want to be part of it.
Human signaling. Alex Pentland, MIT Human Dynamics Lab. Sociometer (proximity, voice). Belonging cues. Much older than language. Answer the question: Are we safe together? Close proximity, eye contact, physical touch, lots of short energetic exchanges, high level of mixing, few interruptions, lots of questions, active listening, humor, small attentive gestures (thank you). What are we looking for: energy, individualization, future orientation.
Amy Edmondson. Psychological Safety.
(even people who study safety take time to realize they might need to work on their behavior to increase safety around them)
Ch 2: The Billion-Dollar Day When Nothing Happened
Google vs Overture, AdWords engine, Jeff Dean. Constant flow of challanges in a safe group beats bigger and better funded group.
Organizational Blueprints for Success in High-Tech Start-Ups: Lessons from the Stanford Project on Emerging Companies. James Baron and Michael Hannan. Models: star (hire the best and brightest), professional (hire most skilled), commitment (hire for culture fit).
Amygdala: Scanning for danger & maintaining social connections. Belonging. We are close, we are safe, we share a future.
Ch 3: The Christmas Truce, the One-Hour Experiment and the Missileers
1914, English-German truce on xmas. Prolonged exchange of micro-truces and belonging cues.
WIPRO call center, high level of turn-over, 1 hr intervention after standard training for new employees, focus on positive and individual uniquness lead to much higher retention rates.
Missileers - the opposite of belonging. (cold war, obsolete tech)
Ch 4: How to build Belonging
Gregg Popovich, best NBA coach. Close, personal, no-bullshit truth telling. In challenging times, make people feel connected to a bigger purpose (players watching political documentaries). Connect people through food (and wine).
Food and wine aren’t just food and wine. They’re a vehicle for making and sustaining connections.
Successful cultures are oriented less around achieving happiness than around solving hard problems together. High-candor feedback, uncomfortable truth-telling. Big failures can be used to bring the team together.
Ch 5: How to Design for Belonging
Tony Hsieh, macgyvering through youth, Link Exchange (1998), Zappos ($1 bln in revenues in 2009, sold to Amazon) Downtown Project. “My job is to architect the greenhouse”. High “collisions” space (connections).
Allen Curve. Thomas Allen, MIT, study of “twin projects” during cold war (which team build successul solution to a similar hard problem). 8m. Proximity is an indicator of beloning. Face recognition stops at about 50m.
What mattered most in creating a successful team had less to do with intelligence and experience and more to do with where the desks happened to be located.
Ch 6: Ideas for Action
“Overcommunicate” your listening. Lean towards, yes-uh-hum-gotcha, no interruptions. Express fallibility. What am I missing? I could be wrong here. Don’t shoot the messenger. Hug them. Overdo Thank-You. Take hiring very seriously and elimitate bad apples. Create safe, collision-rich spaces. Give voice to everyone: What do you like most about this place? What do you like least? What would you change if you were in charge? Pick-up trash. Seek simple ways to serve the group. Capitalize on Threshold moments. (people pay more attention during transitions) Avoid giving sandwich feedback.
Part 3: Establish purpose
Ch 13: Three Hundred and Eleven Words
Johnson and Johnson credo: https://www.jnj.com/credo/ 1) customers, 2) employees, 3) community, 4) stakeholders
Purpose is about creating simple beacons that focus attention and engagement on the shared goal.
High-purpose environments are filled with small, vivid signals designed to create a link between the present moment and a future ideal. Here is where we are. Here is where we want to go.
Gabriele Oettingen, mental contrasting. 1) envision a reachable goal 2) envision the obstacles.
Ch 14: Taming the Hooligans
2004, UEFA, Portugal, the English Disease. Clifford Stott, social psychology, crowd violence. Remove signs of riot gear/force. Encourage police to know enough to engage in “small talk” about football, teams/coaches, etc.
“riots are born from small scale confrontations.” control with an array of consistent little signals.
One of the best measures of any group’s culture is its learning velocity – how quickly it improves its performance of a new skill.
Amy Edmondson, 1998, MICS study (minimally invasive cardiac surgery).
Fastest learning team:
- Framing (purpose)
- Roles (individual and collective skills)
- Rehearsals
- Explicit encouragement to speak up
- Active reflection (head-mounted camera, also Boyd pilot training)
NB: the list above does not contain “years of experience”, “status and structure”, “organizational support”. Communication signals could easily be viewed as obvious and redundant.
What seems like repetion is, in fact, navigation.
High-purpose environment. Vision alone is not enough. You need to provide a stream of consistent, small, guiding signals.
Ch 15: How to Lead for Proficiency
FnB in NY, 20% survival rate after 5 years. Good food, location, service, training, branding, leadership,…
Danny Meyer, Union Square Cafe
Staff priorites: colleagues, guests, community, suppliers, investors
Are you an agent or a gatekeeper?
Saldago’s study of Meyer’s restaurants successful practices:
- selection of employees based on emotional capabilities
- respectful treatment of employees
- managment through a simple set of rules that simulate complex and intricate bahaviors benefiting customers.
The road to success is paved with mistakes well handled.
- create priorities
- name key behaviours
- flood the environment to link 1 and 2 (catch-phrases, “in” language)