The Culture Code by Daniel Cole
“These awkward, painful interactions generate the highly cohesive, trusting behaviour necessary for smooth operation.”
3 Main messages:
People need to feel psychologically safe in order to perform at their best
Leaders need to share vulnerability
Successful cultural communities are aligned around a clear and agreed purpose
As a Headteacher I used to repeatedly say that my role was threefold: to make sure everyone was safe and felt safe; to make sure everyone was happy and being kind to others; and to make sure that everyone was learning. All research and experience tells us that we learn best when we feel safe and happy. I believe that this is true whenever a group of people come together to work and The Culture Code digs into how the leaders of some of the world’s most effective teams have managed to create safe, vulnerable and purposeful environments. .
Many years ago, Peter Skillman was studying how groups can work together effectively and he created The Design Challenge (also called Spaghetti Tower). Skillman found that teams of Kindergarteners consistently outperformed teams of highly academic adults when completing this task. Daniel Cole tells us that this is “not because they are smarter but because they work together in a smarter way.” He then wrote this book to explain how to build teams whose joint performance greatly outweighs individual performances.
Cole splits his works into the three main areas of ‘Building Safety’, ‘Sharing Vulnerability’ and ‘Establishing Purpose’. He then draws on varied and detailed examples from different successful and creative cultures across society. Each section shares stories about exceptional leaders and teams who have clearly defined their codes of conduct and created communities which work exceptionally well together. From The All Blacks to Johnson & Johnson, Cole unpicks the key habits and messages which we can work towards replicating in our workplaces.
In the section on ‘Building Safety’ Cole shares the belonging cues that we all need in order to feel safe. As he says on his website: “Great group chemistry isn’t luck; it’s about sending super-clear, continuous signals: we share a future, you have a voice.”
In one chapter he explains the phenomenon of the Christmas Day Truce on 1914, when English and German soldiers on the frontline famously played a game of football. In fact, he explains, this game was only a tiny fraction of what happened on that day when actually tens of thousands of soldiers met in no man’s land to share food, songs and stories and celebrate together. The reason for this trust and sense of community, in even the most aggressive and unusual circumstances, was that the soldiers identified with each other. Due to the close proximity of the armies they had smelled each other’s food, heard each other singing and lived alongside each other for months. They had built a connection which said “we are the same, we are safe, I’ll go halfway if you will.”
Cole writes that psychological safety is built through many small signals, including eye-contact, energy, turn taking, attention and proximity. As this book was published in 2018, before the world went online and many of these became impossible, I would be very interested to hear how he suggests we can continue to foster these with online communication.
In the section about ‘Sharing Vulnerability’ Cole shares numerous behaviours and tools used by the leaders of (arguably) the world’s best teams. He writes about Popovich, the Coach of the San Antonio Spurs, who nurtures and builds his team by ‘filling their cups.’ He is famous for giving ‘magical feedback’ which ensures that all players feel part of the group, are keeping high standards and know that they are part of something bigger.
Cole also share examples from the culture of Zappos, an American online retailer, where the CEO, Tony Hsieh, promotes multiple ‘collisions’ which encourage people to think and work together. “Hsieh has built a machine that transforms strangers into a tribe”.
When writing about ‘Establishing purpose’ Cole tells empowering stories about how different companies have dug deep into their values and purpose when making difficult decisions. He gives the examples of Tylenol recovering from a poisoning scandal, Portuguese police managing English football hooligans effectively in the 2004 European Championships and the Navy SEALS training regime which enables them to function together perfectly, akin to a murmuration of starlings. He gives detailed explanations of techniques for leading for proficiency, like the Meyer restaurant group, and leading for creativity, like Pixar.
Each section is concluded with ideas for action which I believe would provoke rich discussions amongst leadership teams. The recurring themes which keep coming back again and again, are around setting clear purpose and loving your team.
According to the author Scott Berkun, “Every CEO is in fact a Chief Cultural Officer. The terrifying thing is it’s the CEO’s actual behaviour, not their speeches or the list of values they have put up on posters, that defines what the culture is.” In schools then, a leader’s behaviour should reassure everyone that they are safe, model and create happiness and stimulate an appetite for learning in all we say and do - certainly no small task!
