The tagline explains it all - This book is about the secrets of highly successful groups. It starts with an interesting experiment by Peter Skillman who gives groups of four these four items - 20 pieces of uncooked spaghetti, one yard tape, one yard string and one marshmallow. The challenge, to make the tallest structure with the marshmallow on top. It turns out that among the different types of groups - executives, managers and all sorts, the clear winners were a group of kindergarten children. That's because their group culture was best - they just went ahead doing the task without any egos playing in, without too much planning and trying to look smart and organised - they just used their group intelligence and went about their job.
Why is culture in groups important? Here's a statistic. One study shows that strong group cultures increases net income by 765% over a 10 year period! Strong cultures produce amazing results and weak cultures produce mediocre results. Now that the point is made, let's see how one can build strong cultures.
Coyle talks of three skills one must learn to build to build strong cultures
1) Skill 1 - Building safety - because signals of connection generate bonding of belonging and identity
2) Skill 2 - Share vulnerability - because habits of mutual risk drive trusting cooperation
3) Skill 3 - establish purpose through narratives that create shared goals and values
Building Safety
How important is a safe space? In the good apples experiment, a person was planted among a group to behave like a bad apple - a jerk/a slacker/ a downer - to bring down the group morale. He succeeded exceedingly well in bringing down the morale of most groups except one group where there was a 'good apple- a guy who took out the danger out of room and defused the situation by his small behaviors. He exuded warmth, deflected negativity, stepped in for someone, listened to another - small behaviors that absorbed the negativity and kept the group morale going. Turns out that small behaviors like these make all the difference and create conditions for others and the group to perform, These behaviors send the message - we are solidly connected. Most such teams behave or think of each other like family, like brothers. They make others feel that they can take a risk and feel supported by creating small moments of social connection.
Coyle found the following characteristics of strongly connected groups -
- close physical proximity, gathering in circles
- constant eye contact
- physical touch - handshakes, fist bumps, hugs
- short, energetic bursts of interaction
- leading with questions, lots of them
- humour, laughter
- small courtesies
Here are five measurable factors in such teams
1) everyone talks and listens in equal measure, contributions are short
2) high levels of eye contact, energetic exchanges
3) members communicate with each other, not just the leader
4) members carry on back channel or side conversations within the team
5) members explore outside the team and bring information back to the team
Let's take a look at the 'belonging cues '
1) Energy (invest energy in the exchange that's occurring)
2) Individualisation (each individual is unique)
3) Future orientation (the relationship will endure)
The message - you are safe
Coyle gives examples of Google's Billion Dollar Day - Larry Page stuck up a note saying 'this sucks' about ads that were thrown up in Adwords. Thanks to a group culture where everyone was considered equal (games, townhalls etc) Jeff Dean, a Googler who worked in Search, saw the note, worked on it over the weekend on his own time, solved the problem and created what later on became Google's billion dollar business - Ad words. Interestingly Jeff Dean did not think much of this and said it was normal.
Someone shares a supporting tip and it turns out that its twice as motivational. Cues must be given repeatedly to reinforce. These cues constantly underline the message that we are close, we are safe, we share a future.
Other examples of group behavior are that of the Christmas truce in the World War I when enemy groups formed a kind of truce by themselves amidst brutal fighting. In Wipro which was experiencing a high employee turnover, they experimented with a control group and two groups which were 1) given training inputs and a talk by a star performer and 2) an extra hour which was focused on the employee. The second group was asked questions that increased inter-personal closeness between the employee and Wipro like - what is unique about you that leads to your happiest times and best performances at work. They ended up performing 250% better.
To build belonging, the author says that the team performs thousands of unselfish behaviors - passing, defending as in the case of San Antonio Spurs. The Coach Popovich was responsible for creating the space - he was one who told the truth but also loved you to death (always a good way to get people close). The team would eat together a lot, give high candor feedback to one another.
The following words work like message - "Í am giving you this feedback because I have very high expectations and I know you can reach them."
Or ask questions like - what do you like most about the job? The least? What would you change as captain?
The formula for building safety in teams seems to be 1) personal up close connection 2) performance feedback - holding high standards 3) giving the big picture perspective
Another way of building safety is to design for belonging as Tony Hsieh of Zappos did. He feels that his job is to architect the greenhouse' i.e. create the right environment that enables such behavior. He believes in increasing the number of collisions between people or meeting more and more people. The design of the environment plays a big role - spaced out places do not add to bonding ...in fact a study revealed that the best bonding happens at a distance of less than 8 m, and beyond that it becomes lesser and lesser. Sustained proximity increases a sense of belonging.
Ideas for action - to build safety
Overcommunicate listening
Spotlight fallibility early on
Embrace the messenger
Preview future connections
Pick up tiny threshold moments
Overdo thank yous
Bad apples
Create safe, collision-rich spaces
Everyone has a voice
Skill 2 - Share Vulnerability
Sharing vulnerability is the glue that improves strong connections and build a strong culture in the team. The example of a flight losing an engine and heading to a sure crash is given. But the pilot, co pilot and a trainer who was a passenger got together (like the kindergarten kids) and went about landing the plane in near zero chances. The pilot knew he could not do it alone and put his ego aside and said 'I do not know what to do'. The trainer who offered to help came up and said 'tell me what you want and I will help you'. All signs of vulnerability. It also appears that when we are vulnerable we are able to smile, ask for help, create harmony in the group, give allowance to make mistakes etc. The three of them figured things on the fly and landed the flight in a one in a million chance. A brilliant example.
Or the example of the restaurant which trains its staff with extreme care for over six months and on the first day tells the full trained waitress - 'íf you ask for help 10 times you are doing good, if you try to do it alone its a disaster'. Another example of this experiment where 10 red balloons were set off in different unknown parts of the USA and groups had to find out all ten in say, a week. All sorts of teams went after the challenge but the team that won was the one that simply put out a message on a website - asking for help (and for enlistments) to track the balloons. With just a direct request for help they cracked in in under 9 hours - which otherwise was expected to take a week! Their mantra - 'need your help, asking for help'.
Clearly exchanges of vulnerability are the pathway through which trusting cooperation is built.
Or how Draper Kaufman designed ''the trust building machine'' after watching the French Corps which exemplified trust and commitment to the team in the World War I. What seemed like a primitive set of exercises (which includes working together with a telephone pole) actually is a set of intuitively designed group tasks that enable everyone to feel vulnerable and to help one another to help themselves. In fact they say that the trust machine exercises push the team to a place where vulnerability and inter connectedness meet. Or take the case of the stand up comedy guys who invented the tough Harold act where everyone gets brutal feedback - it only helped improve them. Or the example of Dave Cooper who was on the Osama case and realised he was stuck with helicopters that were not tested before. When he could not convince the top brass that they should use tested helicopters, he worked with the team on scenarios where the copter would crash - and when the copter did crash on D day the team went about their work like clockwork. The team prepared for every eventuality. Dave says 'human nature is constantly working against us. We have to get around that barrier.
'We need leaders who are willing to accept and own up and say - ''Í screwed that up.' Real courgae he says is seeing and speaking the truth.
Another interesting titbit is that of supporting behaviors that are most important in such cultures. In Bell labs for example, they checked on the scientists who had the most number of patents to see what made them so successful. The common factor it turned out was having lunch with Nyquist, a co-scientist. he was always supportive, nudged people along, understood their deep vulnerabilities and desires and with his warmth, genuine caring, he drew people out, got them going. He unlocked teams in his subtle ways with caring, by really listening and by nudging them into areas they were scared to go. Identify the Nyquuist's in your life and keep meeting them!
Ideas for action to share vulnerability
The leader must be vulnerable first
Overcommunicate expectations
Deliver negative stuff in person
When forming new groups focus on the first vulnerability, the first disagreement
Listen like a trampoline
Resist temptation to add value
Use candor-generating devices to share feedback
Align language into action
Promote flash mentoring
Make the leader disappear
Seek the micro event. Someone holds the door, does an unselfish act, does something unselfish for the team. Highlight it.
Skill 3 - Establish Purpose
Johnson and Johnson believed in the purpose or vision set by its original founders and it helped them make a huge decision. When the drug Tylenol was seen as causing deaths by poisoning the company withdrew 100 mn worth of a drug, against the advise of the state. Thanks to a 311 word statement that specified why they were in business. What's this for? Why are we in business?
An interesting exercise to get things done more easily - visualise where we are, visualise where you want to go, and then visualise the obstacles in the path. This is called mental contrasting. Envision the reachable goal and envision the obstacles. Apparently it helps. Try it.
In another example - to improve quality of calls in a call center they made the executives meet the beneficiaries so they could understand how their work was impacting the beneficiaries. Involvement levels became much higher as they had an increased sense of purpose, of why they were working and how it was helping others in real life. (In one case, a ten hour call with a beneficiary was highlighted and rewarded.) In another experiment they pitted surgeons from a better known facility against those from a small town and the small town ones worked better as a team - lesser egos, more focus on the team.
The playbook seemed the same for teams with a strong sense of purpose - framing (learning experiences that benefit the beneficiaries), roles (explicit roles, why its important that you perform your role well for the team), rehearsal (dry runs), explicit encouragement to speak up, active reflection in real time.
Small every day moments that highlight the basic purpose - this is why we work.
In the case of Meyer's restaurants where the motto was proficiency, they used slogans to constantly convey the message to their staff. The result is that the staff is acutely aware of the needs of the customer and instinctively make the experience a warm, safe one.
Or even more interestingly, how Pixar had developed a cure for creativity - they realised first drafts for most films (including Frozen!) are terrible. So they created a Brains Trust- people who go over the footage every morning and give explicit comments, feedback. Pixar believes that all creative projects are cognitive puzzles involving thousands of ideas and choices -you may not get the right answers at one go or from one person. So they generate a lot of ideas and on one breakthrough idea. They focus less on ideas and more on people and keeping the people in an environment where they can generate more ideas.
According to the Pixar boss, managing people is a creative problem. He says - ''we put in new systems and they learned new ways of interacting.'' For example they made film directors the people who were in charge of the creative process and not the executives. Simple, but effective.
Ideas for action for establishing purpose
Name and rank priorities
Differentiate where you need proficiency, where focus is on creativity
Develop catchphrases to communicate
Measure what matters
Use artifacts, symbols
Identify and highlight bar-setting behaviour
Capture narratives to help identify and reinforce the right behaviors
I loved the story of the hockey team which had this forty-forty rule i.e. they decided to run the full length of the court in defence all through the game. Now this strategy had few results but one time in forty times, they would create an opportunity. Brilliant stuff in terms of champion behavior. Teams with such cultures cannot be held for not putting in effort.
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I loved the book. Its a nice suggestion from young Nitesh Kannala who seems to be an avid reader himself. I have not seen many readers among cricketers but he is one. Coyle puts it succinctly into three skills we can work on and gives enough ideas and examples to take it to work. The benefits are clear. The best thing is we can take these practices to any size group - from a group of friends, to families, to work - any group we are part of. We can only make things better with such cultures.
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