The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups
Original price was: $30.00.$13.01Current price is: $13.01.
Description
“A truly brilliant, mesmerizing read that demystifies the magic of great groups.”—Adam Grant, author of Think Again
A BLOOMBERG AND LIBRARY JOURNAL BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
Where does great culture come from? How do you build and sustain it in your group, or strengthen a culture that needs fixing?
In The Culture Code, Daniel Coyle goes inside some of the world’s most successful organizations—including the U.S. Navy’s SEAL Team Six, IDEO, and the San Antonio Spurs—and reveals what makes them tick. He demystifies the culture-building process by identifying three key skills that generate cohesion and cooperation, and explains how diverse groups learn to function with a single mind. Drawing on examples that range from Internet retailer Zappos to the comedy troupe Upright Citizens Brigade to a daring gang of jewel thieves, Coyle offers specific strategies that trigger learning, spark collaboration, build trust, and drive positive change. Coyle unearths helpful stories of failure that illustrate what not to do, troubleshoots common pitfalls, and shares advice about reforming a toxic culture. Combining leading-edge science, on-the-ground insights from world-class leaders, and practical ideas for action, The Culture Code offers a roadmap for creating an environment where innovation flourishes, problems get solved, and expectations are exceeded.
Culture is not something you are—it’s something you do. The Culture Code puts the power in your hands. No matter the size of your group or your goal, this book can teach you the principles of cultural chemistry that transform individuals into teams that can accomplish amazing things together.
Read more
Additional information
Specification: The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups
|
Reviews (13)
13 reviews for The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups
Add a review
Related Products
Ernest Herring –
Must read for any leader or wanting to learn about good leadership. Good groups and not put together they are grown together. Very good read.
LC –
If you read a lot of business books this book is definitely not for you. I have read most of the “lessons” in this book in other books. I found it extremely boring.
Most of the things in this book are almost speculative and hearsay.
Jolyn. C. Schraedel –
I can say nothing but good about this book. I was totally drawn in and have complete respect for Daniel Coyle. Wonderfully written. Keep it up. This will become a classic for years. Yes! Thumbs up in every way. I will recommend this to any and everyone looking for a great business book about teams, etc. and will praise it lavishly. Thank you.
Carlton JS Austin –
Amazing read. I learned so much on what it takes to create a high performing group. I will be implementing a lot of what the say in my organization.
bruna –
O autor compara grupos de bebês, com executivos de uma maneira impressionante e nos mostra que as vezes, ter títulos é menos importante do que fazer o básico.
Dominique Arrighi de Casanova –
I love this book. It’s easy to read, it’s actionable, and it creates opportunities to find parallels between your workplace and some of the most successful companies in the world. I bought a copy for each of my team.
Beguiled By Books –
Since I do most of my reading on a Kindle, my TBR pile is often misleading. I don’t usually have an order to what I read, and I frequently forget when or why I purchased a book. As I looked at the cover of The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups by Daniel Coyle on my Kindle, I had no recollection of when or why I bought the book. I was pleasantly surprised.
Coyle begins by talking about culture and what it meant in the early days of human history. He then explains how our brains are still wired to respond to culture in the same ways – emotional, physical, and psychological safety – even though we are now at work instead of in hunter-gatherer nomadic groups.
The Culture Code shares interviews with several people who have built outstanding teams and cultures, from Google to Dave Cooper, the unofficial father of the SEALs. Several conversations with Cooper show how emotional, physical, and psychological safety in groups creates cohesion, action, and adaptability within those groups.
“Make Sure the Leader Is Vulnerable First and Often: As we’ve seen, group cooperation is created by small, frequently repeated moments of vulnerability. Of these, none carries more power than the moment when a leader signals vulnerability. As Dave Cooper says, I screwed that up are the most important words any leader can say.”
Coyle shares Cooper’s program of AARs – After Action Reviews – with his team and how candor is the most crucial part of building a successful culture. It’s not about positivity, cheerleading, or a you-can-do-anything attitude. Creating a culture is about modeling the behavior you want to see and not punishing it when you see it.
There are many helpful tips for leaders within these pages. It’s also worth noting that the subtext of Coyle’s The Culture Code shows that everyone and anyone can be a leader. Leadership isn’t about authority, titles, or deference to another person; it’s about honesty, vulnerability, and consistency.
Having read a fair few books on companies, teams, and organizational culture, I thoroughly enjoyed the book. I appreciate the punchiness of the book. Too many books on team culture highlight tired stories of achievement in the 1950s or focus on one particular success story that is unlikely to be repeatable at another company. Coyle shows real examples and the themes that tie Google and the Navy SEALs together in a flexible, repeatable way. I look forward to instilling some of the techniques where I work.
AK –
“The Culture Code” is a valuable resource for anyone interested in building or improving team culture. It provides practical insights and actionable strategies for creating a more cohesive, collaborative, and successful group.
Magnus –
The book is beautifully written. Full of anecdotes and memorable quotes from experts. However I felt that most of the tips are too idealistic to apply in the modern world. Overall a good book though
Krutik –
Krutik –
Daniel Coyle avait déjà mené l’enquête dans Le petit livre du talent, ouvrage dans lequel il cherchait à comprendre comment se cultivaient les talents.
C’est à une autre enquête qu’il nous invite dans “The Culture Code”. Il tente de répondre à cette question : qu’est-ce qui fait que certains groupes s’avèrent plus performants que ne le serait la somme de leurs membres là où d’autres le sont moins.
Pour cela, il nous emmène explorer différents environnements capables de générer des performances exceptionnelles : IDEO, PIXAR ou Johnson & Johnson mais aussi l’équipe de Basket des San Antonio Spurs ou l’unité d’élite de la Marine américaine (SEAL Team 6). Il nous plonge également dans des recherches universitaires sur lesquelles il s’appuie pour expliquer ce qu’il a observé.
Il met en évidence 3 caractéristiques majeures :
– Créer un cadre de sécurité où l’on peut s’exprimer sans crainte de représailles.
– Ne pas hésiter à parler des vulnérabilités de chacun car ce niveau d’échange fonde la confiance et la solidarité entre les membres de l’équipe,
– Définir, faire vivre et sans cesse se référer à une noble cause (high purpose) qui fédère et inspire l’ensemble des membres de l’équipe, en particulier dans des situations critiques pour lesquelles aucune procédure n’existe et qui exigent des décisions rapides.
Le choix des termes pour exprimer ces 3 caractéristiques est contestable : le cadre de sécurité agrège des pratiques d’écoute, de reconnaissance, de partage d’expérience, mais aussi de sélection drastique des membres ; les vulnérabilités, qu’on pourrait également appeler humilité, symbolisent toutes les pratiques qui permettent de construire une atmosphère de confiance et de solidarité; la noble cause vise tout ce qui va permettre de partager les critères de discernement dans la conduite des opérations au quotidien.
L’intérêt de ce livre, agréable à lire, grâce à son style narratif, réside également dans son souci pratique. Pour chaque thème, l’auteur le développe selon une structure ternaire :
– présentation du thème
– étude de plusieurs cas pratiques d’organisations l’ayant mis en oeuvre
– idées pour aider le lecteur à le mettre en oeuvre.
Ce livre s’inscrit dans ce courant du management contemporain (voir par exemple Principles: Life and Work, Reinventing Organizations: Vers des communautés de travail inspirées., La Révolution Holacracy : Le système de management des entreprises performantes, An Everyone Culture: Becoming a Deliberately Developmental Organization), qui pointe que l’obstacle principal à la performance réside dans une culture qui fait primer la hiérarchie et la régulation par la norme écrite là où l’enjeu clé se situe dans un rapport juste à la réalité et une recherche permanente de la vérité.
C’est une bonne synthèse pour comprendre que certains schémas de pensée encore très présents dans le monde professionnel sont obsolètes et causent les difficultés qui ne peuvent résoudre qu’en en changeant.
Wally Bock –
There are a lot of books about culture and how to create a strong and healthy one. Daniel Coyle knew that a strong and effective culture is part of the secret sauce of successful organizations. He knew that “A strong culture increases net income 756 percent over 11 years, according to a Harvard study of more than 200 companies.” He thought he could look at strong cultures in a different way and write a book about it. Here’s how he puts it.
“I spent the last four years visiting and researching eight of the world’s most successful groups, including a special-ops military unit, an inner-city school, a professional basketball team, a movie studio, a comedy troupe, a gang of jewel thieves, and others. I found that their cultures are created by a specific set of skills”
Coyle started with a definition of culture that’s a little bit different than the norm. He says, “Culture is a set of living relationships working toward a shared goal. It’s not something you are, it’s something you do.”
So, what is it that you do? What do people in organizations that create strong cultures do that their peers in other organizations don’t do?
Coyle organizes the book into three sections, each one of which relates to a specific skillset. The three skills are: build safety; share vulnerability; and establish purpose.
There are several chapters about each skill. There’s a good mix of stories and studies. Coyle chooses his examples carefully and tells their stories well. He doesn’t use bullet points or frequent summaries, so sometimes you will work to tease out his meaning. You can get a sense of this if you review my highlights from the Culture Code on Goodreads.
Most business authors put summaries of key points or action steps at the end of every chapter. Coyle doesn’t. Instead, he includes a chapter at the end of every section, titled “Ideas for Action.” That chapter functions as a review of the other chapters in the section. I think that’s a good device, but I’d rather he also put his key points at the end of every chapter.
Coyle’s a good storyteller and he makes it a point to try to tell stories you may have heard before from an angle where you haven’t seen them before. One of those stories is the story about Tylenol and its credo. Another is the story of the founding of Pixar.
In telling those stories, Coyle leaves out some interesting and potentially helpful things. For example, he tells us about the meeting where Johnson & Johnson executives reviewed the company’s credo to see if it should be revised. We know there was a meeting. But Coyle never tells us whether they changed the credo or not at that meeting. He simply jumps ahead to the Tylenol crisis, where the credo became guiding principles for one of the most successful disaster recovery examples ever.
Then, there’s the story of Ed Catmull and Pixar. Coyle says, “If you set out to design a life that represented the perfect merger of art and science, you might design one that looks like Catmull’s.” Then, just below, after mentioning a little bit about Catmull’s parents and his early interests, he says “After college, he landed a job with George Lucas…”
Well yes, it was, technically, “after college,” but it was a full five years after Catmull got his PhD. And, after talking about the life as a model for the perfect merger of art and science, Coyle leaves out the fact that in his pre-Lucas and pre-Pixar days, Ed Catmull worked on projects for ARPA during the time he was working as a physicist.
Those are important things to know if you want to learn how Ed Catmull developed into the manager he is today. You can learn more about them in his book, Creativity, Inc, about his life and Pixar.
Special Note
Chapters 15 and 16 are worth reading, even if you skip everything else. Chapter 15 is “How to Lead for Proficiency” while chapter 16 is “How to Lead for Creativity.” The two skills are different and which one you choose as a manager will determine what values you treasure and what kinds of performance you optimize.
In A Nutshell
This is a book that will help you create a strong and supportive culture where you are. There are problems with the book, but they’re not big enough or consistent enough to really detract from the value. If you want to learn about how to create and maintain a positive and strong culture in your team or organization, buy and read The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups by Daniel Coyle.
Jose Araya –
I really appreciated all the learning, especially the great examples of how culture is built and the difference it makes. Would definitely recommend this book to leaders or team members looking for ways to improve their work environment and how collaboration can turn any team for the better.