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“Cultural code: the secrets of extremely successful groups and organizations” - notes from the book

I listened to Daniel Coyle's The Cultural Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups by Daniel Coyle after reading a passage that left the impression “this is it!”

The whole book was at the same level as the introduction. She completely changed my idea of ​​working in teams. So far, of all the books about the work that I read, I think that the “Cultural Code” influenced me the most. In second place and third place I would put “ In work with the head ” by Cal Newport (“ Deep Work ” by Cal Newport) and “ Principles ” by Ray Dalio (“ Principles: Life and Work ” by Ray Dalio).

In my opinion, the “Cultural Code” is a must-read for everyone who works in a team.

This post is my notes from the book.


Culture is not what you are, but what you do.

Affiliation


Features of teams with "chemistry" ( membership signals ):

  • Interaction in physical proximity, landing around
  • A lot of eye contact
  • Handshakes, claps, friendly hugs
  • Sharing short emotional cues rather than long speeches
  • Uniform interaction, everyone talks to everyone
  • People rarely interrupt each other in speech.
  • People ask each other many questions.
  • People listen to each other carefully and proactively.
  • Laugh
  • Lots of little tokens like holding a door
  • "Thank you" is often said out loud

Distinctive properties of membership signals:

  1. They put extra energy into the interaction.
  2. They denote individuality and respect for the person with whom the interaction takes place.
  3. They report that engagement will continue in the future.

Membership signals broadcast the message "You are safe here."

If you want others to believe you, you must with all your heart believe in what you say.

Team performance is determined by five measurable factors:

  1. All team members speak and listen in approximately the same proportion, without pulling the blanket over themselves.
  2. The members of the group look into each other's eyes a lot and speak energetically.
  3. People interact with each other directly, and not just through a leader.
  4. People support parallel conversations on related topics. (Note: as I understand it, in programming examples can be talk about new technologies or features of programming languages, or even just about life, and not just strictly about immediate tasks.)
  5. Team members periodically choose to learn something beyond and then share new information and ideas with the team.

Words are just noise. The effectiveness of the team depends on real actions that support one dominant idea: "We are all in the same boat."

Three startup models:

  • Team of stars: hiring the strongest.
  • Team of professionals: hiring people with the most suitable skills.
  • Team of like-minded people: hiring people with common values ​​who can become friends with each other. This model is successful more often than others.

Take care of your comrades to give them motivation.

We feel more autonomy when we think about our connections and relationships.

It is necessary to continuously maintain and strengthen the sense of belonging in the team (and not only periodically, or only when a new person joins the team).

Try to make contact at the interview to see if you can make friends with these people (or this candidate).

Find common ground with colleagues in something more than a profession.

Have lunch with colleagues.

Join people who think about solving difficult problems, and not about achieving happiness .

“Magic” feedback formula: “I tell you about this because I want a lot from you, and I believe that you can do it.” This phrase contains three signals: “you are part of the team”, “this is a special place”, “I believe in you”.

Cooperation and vulnerability


Look in the face of people when they speak. (Note: perhaps this is a really important point for programmers :) Nod. Ask “What do you mean?”, “Can you explain in more detail?”

Listen with your eyes wide open, motionless, leaning slightly towards your interlocutor, with slightly raised eyebrows, continuously confirming the words of the interlocutor.

It’s important not to interrupt people. The best sellers almost never interrupt interlocutors. Although, to kill a person with mutual enthusiasm for an idea is not the same as to kill because of a lack of attention and genuine interest.

When you join a team, immediately emphasize that you are a mere mortal, and you can make mistakes just like others. Especially if you come to a leadership position. Stimulate feedback with phrases like:

  • This is only my five cents.
  • Of course, I could be wrong here.
  • What didn’t I notice?
  • What do you think?

Ask questions. Listen carefully. Be intellectually humble.

Speak emotional phrases like “I'm terribly afraid ...” to create opportunities for a deeper connection. Such phrases make the listener want to help. (Note: this advice from the book, like many others on the subject of vulnerability, runs counter to (?) The psychological principle of “self-reliance,” which seems very important to me, including for future effective teamwork. I see several options: 1) Deviation from a personal psychological optimum really leads to better team results. 2) When a vulnerability is externally manifested, but maintaining an exclusive internal reliance on itself, teammates will feel this and we will get all the advantages and vulnerabilities, and reliance on ourselves. Although, even if this is so, it seems to me that such a line is very difficult to maintain in practice.3) The vulnerability tips from the book are simply incorrect, or at least superficial and incomplete. What do you think about that?)

Encourage others to give feedback. It’s hard for people to raise their hands and say, “I have unformed thoughts about this.”

Give thanks in excess. This encourages cooperation, even with people who are very different from you. Thank the youngest member of the team.

Create conditions so that everyone can express their opinion.

Look for ways to show equality with small gestures, such as picking up someone else's trash from the floor. They broadcast the signal "We are together."

The first day of a person in a team is of great importance. Emphasize the peculiarity of the moment: "Now we are together."

The processes for positive and negative feedback should be separate.

Give negative feedback in the form of a dialogue:

  1. Ask if a person wants to receive feedback.
  2. Focus the dialogue on creating a common understanding of the necessary development steps.
  3. Mark positive with bright, short phrases and praise.

Do not be too serious. Laughter is the most basic signal of security and community.

Trust needs vulnerability, not the other way around.

For collaboration, vulnerability is not a risk, but a psychological necessity.

Leave yourself completely open so that everyone can see who you really are. If you do it right, you can build many times more trust than in any other way.

One person giving directions to others is an unreliable scheme for making good decisions.

Try to level the effect of authority . This cognitive distortion must be constantly taken into account, because it cannot be completely removed.

When expressing your opinion, be sure to add phrases such as "Show me what I'm wrong", "Explain to me why this is wrong."

Try to ask a lot of questions instead of giving directions. “Does anyone have any ideas?”

Directly tell the younger team members that they should not be silent if something strains them in your decision or behavior.

Out-of-hours meetings help reduce the effect of authority. Physical testing is even better (e.g. camping).

Allocate time for retrospectives and analysis of past projects.

“I screwed up (a)” - perhaps the most important phrase that a leader can say.

A good retrospective needs a plan. Move around the project chronologically, asking a lot of “why.”

The purpose of the retrospective is to build common mental models that can be applied in future projects. As a result, everyone should understand the real picture of what happened, and not a small part of it. (Note: the theory of complex systems and poststructuralism cast doubt on the attainability of this goal: see Decker's papers , Woods' theorem .)

Make sure that people get feedback on how their actions affect others.

The tone of a good retrospective is “backbone of humility”. (Note: I did not understand this phrase. Can someone try to explain it?). The fundamental desire to reach the truth and accept responsibility.

Fundamental openness is difficult, but it pays for itself. (Compare with the " radical truth and transparency " of Dalio.)

True courage is a willingness to face the truth and tell the truth to each other. Nobody wants to "stir up the water" by saying, "Wait, what's really going on here?"

Listen with warmth and curiosity. Catch the meaning of what your interlocutor is doing, throw in new ideas and ask “did you think to do this?”

A leader must often be vulnerable.

Let people know about their fears with calm and confidence in order to carry out a deeper signal: “it's safe to tell the truth.”

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Better to talk too much than not talk about expectations. The successful teams that I visited do not think that communication will happen by itself. On the contrary, they again and again spoke about important points in order to clarify the expectations and principles of collaboration, worked out a common terminology and understanding of the most important tasks of individual team members.


The harder the task, the more help you will need to deal with it. Feel free to say how people can help you.

Work together. The secret to mutual success is gaining one's interests for the sake of comrades.

Give negative feedback only in person.

I drew attention to this informal rule in several teams that I visited. If you need to convey bad news or negative feedback to someone, you should do it in person, even on relatively minor issues. This rule is not easy to follow (it is much easier to write a letter or message), but it works because it helps to honestly open the conflict and remove any misunderstanding.

Two critical points for team building:

  • First vulnerability
  • First disagreement

They open two ways:

  • Solve issues from a position of "strength."
  • Learn something new together.

When you listen, it’s not enough just to nod carefully. Try to bring in your thoughts and come to a new understanding together.

Be careful not to end sentences and thoughts of the interlocutor. For vulnerabilities (in a good way) it is often enough to simply keep silent. Do not interrupt with your superficial ideas and stories about your experience. (Note: this advice is similar to the opposite of the previous one. As I understand it, the distinctive side is to talk about something new that you realized (a) during the conversation, and not about what you already knew (a) before, just showing his erudition.)

The best listeners:

  • They have an interlocutor and make him feel support.
  • Focused on help and collaboration.
  • Ask questions periodically. Carefully and constructively check old assumptions.
  • Sometimes they offer new ideas and alternative solutions.

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When you ask questions, do not be satisfied with the first answer. Often, this is just an automatic response, not a real answer to a problem. Try to approach her from several sides, asking more “why.”

Strive for frankness, not bare truth. (Note: this phrase does not give me any real understanding, like everything that is said on this topic in the “Cultural Code”, as well as on a special site : a separate book is written around this thought and the whole company is working. I have a suspicion that radical frankness is substantially non-verbalizable, at least in Russian and English.)

Give more precise and specific feedback. Do not judge and do not become personal.
(Note: I came up with the following examples:

  • Precision: “you write bad code and don’t know how to react to criticism” => say only one thing and the second another time.
  • Concreteness: “you write a bad code” => “you write an unreadable code”
  • Do not hurt your personality: “you write an unreadable code” => “I can’t understand this code”
  • Do not judge: “this is a slow / poorly tested / unreliable code” => “this code does not satisfy our SLA / minimum level of test coverage / ...”)

Express mentoring: watch over your shoulder for a few hours at how your teammates work.

Mission


Repeat your mission every day during the rally.

Mental contrast:

  • Think about your goal and imagine that it has been achieved.
  • Vividly imagine the obstacles on the way to the goal.

Motivation does not exist by itself. Motivation appears when you focus on your current situation and on what you want to come to.

Stories are the best known way to convey mental models that will control behavior.

Productive Learning Culture:

  1. Present training as something that will help in achieving the ultimate goals (or clients), not as an addition to existing practices.
  2. Clearly state why each role in the team is important for ultimate success.
  3. Learning does not mean just starting to do what you want to master. Consider a training plan. Analyze the results. Discuss team communication.
  4. Encourage people to pay attention to any problems and use active learning .
  5. Conduct retrospectives.

Strive vigorously to fix problems (“love” problems). Help colleagues. The first priority is taking care of each other.

Take your time to judge people by their behavior. When in doubt, believe in their best intentions.

Do not spread negative energy in the workplace (for example, if you are in a bad mood).

Indicated explicitly or not, there are always priorities. If you want to grow, it is better to clearly articulate priorities and their respective actions.

Engage the team in work on several clear, clear goals.

Mission - this is what helps to weed out the right decisions among many diverse ideas.

Discreet phrases for creative teams that must determine their own goals:

  • Hire people smarter than yourself.
  • Better a lot of small mistakes than one big one.
  • Do not neglect any ideas.
  • Do not avoid difficulties.
  • It's better to invest in good people than good ideas.

A creative mission is created through the responsibility and direction of the team along the bumpy path to creating something new and important. Creative team needs support.

(This description reminds me of the hero’s path .)

Successful teams use crises to clarify their mission. Thank the failure for this opportunity. Failures are necessary to understand what you and the team are really worth.


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Speak priorities ten times more clearly than you think is enough.

Periodically question the values ​​and mission of the team. Lead people to important issues. Who are we? Where and why are we going?

Determine what the team requires clarity, and what - creativity.

Clarity : creating a mission in the skillful execution of certain tasks is similar to drawing a vivid picture. Center the goal and identify clear paths and milestones to achieve it.

Give the team a complete set of clear and understandable role models.

Have frequent workouts with lots of feedback.

Think of catchy rules: if A, then B.

Remind and emphasize the importance of basic skills.

Creativity: Equip the team with everything you need for the hard work of creating something new. Equip the Expedition: Provide the team with all kinds of support, resources, and tools.

Closely monitor the structure and dynamics of the team.

Define and fiercely defend the autonomy of the creative team.

Make people not afraid to make mistakes and share feedback.

Actively encourage group initiative.

The copyright for the quotes belongs to Daniel Coyle. Author permission to publish quotes received. In preparing the post, I did not use the translation of the book into Russian.

Minute of Advertising: This year I began to publish quotes and notes from read articles, posts, and book reviews (including this one) on the Engineering Ideas blog . Topics: software design, distributed systems, big data, operation and reliability, engineering efficiency, team relationships. You can subscribe by mail or RSS .

Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/undefined/

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