The Culture Code

Innovation Culture and Group Performance

Successful innovation needs an environment where new ideas flourish, problems get solved, and expectations are exceeded. One way to get there is to study examples of outstanding, successful teams and to analyze what makes them tick as groups of individuals. Since “group culture is one of the most powerful forces on the planet” it’s worthwhile to look at group performance in more details. What is necessary to generate cohesion and cooperation?

The book The Culture Code by Daniel Coyle, explores the dynamics of group behavior and gives clear points how to create a thriving culture. Starting with the famous marshmallow challenge experiment of Peter Skillmann, where kindergartners beat business school students. In a nutshell their successful approach can be described as “trying a bunch of stuff together”, whereas the business school students, on the surface collaborating in an organized way, are in realty more in a status management process. So “why do certain groups add up to be greater than the sum of their parts, while others add up to be less?” To answer this question Coyle derives a specific set of skills that characterizes cultures of successful groups by helping them to use the power of their social brains and to create interactions. The ability to build safety, share vulnerability and establish purpose are key to build a cohesive, motivated culture.

Build Safety – creating safety is done by delivering targeted signals at key points and being sensible for subtle moments that may seem small. Some of the recommended actions to build safety include the following three:

Overcommunicate your listening: the posture and expression during listening are key. Keeping a still posture and leaning toward the speaker helps. Also avoiding interruptions that are not rooted in mutual excitement but in lack of awareness and connection.

Spotlight your fallibility early on – especially if you’re a leader: it is important to open up and show weaknesses and mistakes. Those signals not just admit weakness they also actively invite input. People will answer genuine questions from leaders who ask for their help or opinion.

Embrace fun: because laughter is the most fundamental sign of safety and connection.

Share Vulnerability – vulnerability tends to spark trust and cooperation and revealing it works powerful when it comes to group interactions. To achieve collaboration in teams trust is needed and the exchanges of vulnerability are key underlying mechanism to achieve it. Interesting actions to build habits of group vulnerability include:

Make sure the leader is vulnerable first and often – for Dave Cooper the statement “I screwed up are the most important words a leader can say”. A leader’s message of anxiety or failure underlines the deeper message that it’s safe to tell the truth, turning vulnerability from a weakness in a strength.

Listen like a trampoline – effective listeners respond actively, absorb what the speaker gives, support them, and add energy. This helps the conversation to gain velocity and altitude. Fitting to the trampoline model repetition results in amplitude, therefore it’s worthwhile to go for the answer not the first response.

Embrace the discomfort – emotional pain and a sense of inefficiency are discomforting feeling when groups apply candor-generating practices like after action reviews (AAR).  Going along this path may seem backward-oriented however it is the right way to build stronger groups.

Establish Purpose – to establish connection between group members and to enable collaboration is not enough also a high-purpose environment has to be established and nurtured. The question what is this all for has to be answered. It turns out that stories are an appropriate way to achieve this. The following actions are some to help in this purpose-building:

Name and rank your priorities – a limited number of not more than five priorities often with in-group relationship ranked high or at the top is a success factor for groups. To build and sustain the group itself is key and facilitates the challenges and tasks the group has to face.

Embrace the use of catchphrases – catchphrases can be misunderstood as obvious sounding cultish jargon. However they have to be simple, forthright and action-oriented. For example IDEO’s “Talk less, do more”. Nudging into the right direction is what they are all about, achieved with clarity and focus.

Use artifacts – artifacts clearly demonstrate what really matters. They can be found in environments of successful cultures to embody their identity and to establish purpose.

The word „culture“ derives from a French term, which in turn derives from the Latin „colere,“ which means to tend to the earth and grow, or cultivation and nurture, i.e. to care. So there is no final state of how people interact in groups, instead culture should be viewed as “a set of living relationships working towards a shared goal.” As Daniel Coyle explains the key to build and support a functioning innovation culture lies in fulfilling the need for safety and connection and in connecting individuals to a common purpose and future vision. He derives his findings from many examples from highly successful groups including the U.S. Navy’s SEAL Team Six, IDEO, and the San Antonio Spurs.

To sum it up: Culture is not something you are—it’s something you do. No matter the size of your group or your goal, the principles from this book explain the cultural chemistry that transform individuals into teams that can accomplish amazing things together.

Numerous examples of cultural practices that illustrate those above mentioned points can be found in the Innovation Culture Navigator. It acts as a tool box to build a cohesive, motivated culture. Using it helps to answer the questions where great culture comes from and how to build and sustain it in your group.

Go ahead and build a team that is not just more effective, but happier!