# 58: BOOK OF THE WEEK — “The Culture Code”
Story behind the Book Choice
Personally, I am a strong individualist. But I was very privileged to learn in the past that there is some magic to group dynamics. This seemingly illogical formula that the sum can be more than its parts is ‘true.’ For me, the biggest joy is to put together groups and observe their interaction. For others, the greatest fun is to be active in a group. I know many people who say about themselves that they need a group around them in order to be productive and possibly creative. Since my core activity is writing, this does not apply to me — at least not while I am writing. The inspiration before can indeed come from group settings.
I wonder if Daniel Coyle also shares this view? After all, he is a writer as well and the author of the The Culture Code. I bought the book not a long time ago. I think, I actually read his book The Talent Code after I had bought but not yet read The Culture Code. In any case, I am very glad I read both. They offer great insights into individual and group behavior. Well, as I am writing this, I am quite unhappy about this one-sentence summary. It is not true. They are not just about ‘beavior.’ To me, both books have so much value because they truly teach you a lot about learning and leadership. And since I somehow always come back to these topics, it made sense to now read about group success.
Ever since I was deeply into diversity management research, I am well aware of how effective groups can be which, at first sight, show a weird group constellation or which are facing a particularly difficult task. But Coyle’s book is about much more than that. Actually, I would not even say it is only about groups. From my perspective (which is, of course, biased because I always look out for leadership insights), the book is at least 50% about individual leadership skills that allow groups to flourish. But since you know from last week that my goal is not a comprehensive review of the book, it does not matter much what the content is about from some critic’s perspective. All I can say is that I enjoyed reading it very much.
- Kindergarten
These sentences are from the opening story. The experiment that Coyle describes was a simple creative task. The kindergarten kids and the comparative group consisting of business school students were asked to build a tower with very few utensils like raw spaghetti and marshmallow. You see that the kindergarteners were more successful (and they ran the experiment with different groups and in different countries). To me, however, this is not such a big surprise. From my perspective, writing works completely irrational in a way that I could not explain it. And I guess, the kindergarten kids would not be able to explain how they did what they did if you asked them.
This is such a powerful tale at the beginning because I think a lot about the rule of intellect in our society and the everlasting insistence on rationality. I know, last week I wrote about Factfulness, so I should actually be careful about stressing non-rational approaches to anything too much. Still, I am who I am. I work mostly based on intuition. In addition, everything to me is more or less about culture (national, personal, thinking, status, organizational affiliation, etc.). And people who deal with culture a lot are also often the ones who spent a lot of time as a stranger in other cultures. And with this experience, it is not so unusual to see a group succeed that might not have sophisticated communication tools — not even speaking of a ‘strategy,’ something that Germans especially like to feel ‘safe.’ By the way, safety is also a key issue in the book that is worth learning about.
2. Listening
This passage is about a group magician working at IDEO. She is able to get the most out of teams not by telling them anything that makes them do incredible things. No, she LISTENS. And as you can read in the lines above, listening is something that involves many different skills and activities simultaneously. The keyword is “empathy,” even though, just like Coyle mentions in another passage, that is not even the right word for this kind of deep listening. Only the latter triggers bonding between the person talking and the person listening. There is not much more I want to add here except for the general call to action that I stand for:
Learn how to listen, dear leaders in the world and in corporations.
3. You will not succeed
I have no idea how many times I have read about the Rosenthal study already. But it always touches me again. It explains so much about the wrongs of the education system and about the relationship between merit and success in general. If you are being told: you will make it to the top and the people around you actively reinforce this “prophesy,” then you will end up being more successful. This is the positive perspective, obviously. The negative one is that there are so many children and adults on this planet that have nobody who tells them that they will succeed. And here, the same logic kicks in — they are less likely to make it…
I just cannot understand how people, like the teachers in the experiment, simply believe in some bullshit just because some scientists tell them which student will succeed and who will not . Where is gut feeling in this context? Where is trust in one’s individual assessment? How can research and academic titles gain this status? It really makes me angry to know that, in this very minute, millions of students around the world are wrongfully thinking they will never make it only because some teachers or some “respectable” persons give them the (latent) feeling that they are among the losers.
And I think, among the above-mentioned categories of behavior that lead to this wrong conclusion on the part of the students, warmth is the most subtle one. It can only be felt by the student him/herself. Yes, the other things, like not getting more learning material or time for individual talks, are all essential. But meeting a cold shoulder while seeing that others are met with warmth and empathy is cruel. It is the one and only aspect that children and people of any age are likely to take personal — in a very negative way. Humans are not robots. We have antennas and sensors everywhere and we do not forget easily when we are not being treated equally. This especially holds true if this treatment is related to some false expectations of school performance or even IQ. The spiral that this triggers can lead to a lot of self-harm later.
Well, it was really hard for me to just focus on this limited number of passages today and to keep it short (that is not only an issue today…). There are amazing stories of individuals in the book that really resonated with me. They are all connected by one concept: leadership. This might sound funny because groups are usually associated with less/no hierarchical structures at the outset — at least in the new era. Still, leadership plays an immensely important role — be it for people inside the group or outside as leaders/coaches of groups. What you learn throughout the book is that real leaders are never completely outside the group. Instead, they observe, they speak up, they cheer. And real cheering does not take many words, as Coyle explains. The representative group wizzards he met during his research are altogether able to pass on their messages to their teams in very short notifications:
“Technology inspires art, and art inspires technology.” — Pixar
“Shoot, move, and communicate.” — SEAL
“Work hard be nice.” — KIPP
Reflection Questions
1) Do you believe in the group magic that 1+1 can be more than 2?
2) Are you a good listener?
3) Do you speak up when someone tells you to think about other people in a certain way?