Coyle, D. (2018). The Culture Code. The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups.

New York:
Penguin Random House LLC.
Reviewed by Sarah Reinhardt.

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 Section 1: Descriptive Review

This book is laid out in three parts, which align with the three top skills that Daniel Coyle

states all strong cultures or teams have that make them better than you would expect them to be,

if you evaluated their individual skillsets. He goes so far as to insist that we shouldn’t assume a

bunch of highly effective individuals will make a highly successful team. The three skills that

Coyle says are evident in strong cultures are building safety, sharing vulnerability, and

establishing purpose. These skills are applied slightly differently by each of the highly

successful groups that he discusses in the book. For example, the Navy Seals will approach

building safety in a different way than the teachers at a charter school will build safety for their

students or the way that a restaurant will build safety for their servers. Coyle was researching

each of these groups for another book that he was writing, The Talent Code, and found the

common themes compelling enough to write this book, The Culture Code, from some of the

same research. Each skill has a section in the book with chapters devoted to telling stories about

successful groups and some groups that are failing. Each section also includes how-to chapters

that attempt to identify how to effectively incorporate each of the skills into your culture.

Skill one is to build safety within the group so that all members are connected by

relationships that are closer to familial relationships than that of just friends or co-workers

(Location 174, Kindle Edition). Coyle starts this section out in chapter one by telling us about

some very interesting research regarding “bad apples”. These are not apples that you would

purchase at the grocery store, but rather those team members that have a bad attitude and that

throw off our group mojo with their lack of attention and “can don’t” attitude. Coyle indicates

that highly successful groups create a safe atmosphere that allows everyone to feel psychological

safety and be vulnerable in a way that we don’t normally see. Maslow’s hierarchy of needs

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includes levels for “physiological, safety, belonging and love, self-esteem, and self-

actualization” (p. 106) and states that you can’t move to the next level of the hierarchy without

achieving the current level. According to Coyle, safety is achieved through a series of belonging

cues transmitted amongst group members that tell our animal brains that we are safe. The bad

apples I mentioned above would disrupt weaker groups, but not groups with strong belonging

cues. Chapters 2 and 3 in the book give additional examples of strong cultures that foster a sense

of safety and belonging and how they do it. The groups that Coyle identifies are Google,

German and British soldiers on the front-line during World War I at Christmas time, and call

center staff at a company called WIPRO. He also includes a counterpoint story about a group of

Minuteman missileers from the Minot Airforce base in Minot North Dakota. While all the

successful culture stores are very interesting, the counterpoint culture of the missileers is very

effective in pointing out some of the root causes of weak cultures such as authoritarian

leadership, lack of trust, and fear. Coyle includes three chapters in this section that help readers

build (chapter 4) and design belonging (chapter 5), as well as put these ideas in to action (chapter

6). I love the idea of the action chapter because it should provide the details that I need to

increase my skillset relative to building strong relationships and cultures. We will talk more

about how successful the action chapters are in my recommendation at the end of this paper.

Coyle suggests, among many other items, that we need to overcommunicate, show our

weaknesses or mistakes early, hug and thank the messenger instead of shooting them, make sure

everyone has a voice, and avoid sandwich feedback.

Section two of the book highlights the tough skill of sharing vulnerability. Coyle starts

out this section with Chapter 7 by telling the story of United Airlines Flight 232 to Chicago on

July 10th, 1989. By all accounts this flight should have crashed when it experienced catastrophic

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engine and brake failure, and all aboard should have perished. Through a series of coordinated

actions between the pilot, co-pilot, and an airline pilot trainer, who just happened to be on the

flight that day, the flight was able to land. 185 people out of 296 survived. The number of

survivors doesn’t seem that incredible until you understand that this flight was recreated through

simulation over two dozen times by the NTSB in the weeks after the landing. In every

simulation the plane crashed and there were no survivors. This story is a case study in

vulnerability starting with the captain admitting that he didn’t know how to fly the plane without

the engines or how to land without the breaks. Coyle indicates that exposing vulnerabilities

generates “the highly cohesive, trusting behavior necessary for smooth cooperation” (Location

1339, Kindle Edition). Chapter 8 digs in to the vulnerability loop that helps to encourage us to

cooperate and trust each other (Location 1388, Kindle Edition). This vulnerability loop is really

a transactional communication model (pg. 10) where the signal of vulnerability is received and

then a reciprocal signal of vulnerability is sent back creating a sense of increased “closeness and

trust” (Location 1388, Kindle Edition). Chapter 9 focuses on groups that show extreme levels of

cooperation and risk sharing including the Navy Seals, the Upright Citizens Brigade, and a

highly evolved team of robbers called the Pink Panthers. Chapter 10 talks through the different

ways that some groups have established this high level of cooperation and what actions help

improve cooperation for them which include having direction and open lines of communication

as well as making it ok for followers to point out areas for improvement or errors in a leader’s

logic. Chapter 11 focuses on the same concept of cooperation but instead of focusing on this

cooperation at the group level it focuses on the individual. The concept of pointing out areas for

improvement is handled differently by each of the groups but it amounts to something akin to a

highly focused lessons learned session where the team dismantles their performance and makes

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suggestions for next time. In some cases, these sessions are done at the end of a project or

mission but in other cases they are done as reviews as the project or mission is underway. These

sessions allow for the team to autocorrect. They are called AARs, Brain Trusts, and Red

Teaming by the different organizations that use them. Making sure the leader is vulnerable first,

overcommunicate expectations, deliver the negative stuff in person, and use candor generating

practices like AARs, Brain Trusts, and Red Teaming is covered in Chapter 12, which is the ideas

for action chapter.

In section three Coyle discusses establishing purpose for the group. Chapter 13 discusses

how “high-purpose environments are filled with small, vivid signals designed to create a link

between the present moment and a future ideal” (Location 2296, Kindle Edition). In practice,

this is the group sharing their purpose or values together and linking that purpose to everything

they do. There is a great overview of the Johnson and Johnson Tylenol crisis in this chapter that

highlights Johnson and Johnson’s focus on following their credo, which elevates their

responsibly to Tylenol’s users above any other objective, including profits. Chapter 14 focuses

on additional examples of high purpose environments including the police preparing for a soccer

match that promises to end in riots as well as a series of hospitals taking on a new medical

procedure. In both cases, the police and the hospitals that were the most successful shared

several characteristics but the most important one is that they each “sent a handful of steady,

ultra-clear signals that are aligned with a shared goal (Location 2504, Kindle Edition). In

Chapter 15 Coyle talks about how to lead for proficiency and we learn about a charter school

called KIPP, as well as a restaurant group that includes Shake Shack and Gramercy Tavern. In

each case, there is a “heuristic” or series of them that are applied to every day situations that help

both the servers and the students recall and focus on their purpose in the organization. Chapter

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16 covers leading for creativity, rather than proficiency, which discusses the transformation of

Pixar and Disney into, or back into in the case of Disney, the creative giants that they are today.

Chapter 17 pulls together section three with some tips on how to put establishing purpose into

practice in your organization. Some of these potential actions are to name and rank your

priorities and be very clear about them, embrace the use of catch phrases (heuristics), measure

what matters, and focus on bar-setting behaviors.

Section 2: Critical Review

According to his LinkedIn profile, Daniel Coyle has been an author with Penguin

Random House and a contributing editor for Outside Magazine for the last twenty-four years.

Daniel has written several books in addition to the Culture Code. He completed his bachelor’s

degree in English and Pre-Med at the University of Notre Dame. He also completed his master’s

degree in journalism at Northwestern University. His website indicates that he lives in

Cleveland, Ohio with his wife and children during the school year. He spends his summers with

his family in Homer, Alaska. After reviewing his credentials and some of the other writing that

he has done, I’m not fully convinced that he has the right set of skills to tackle this topic. The

writing is engaging, so his skill as a writer comes through for me in this book. The area that I am

unsure of is his leadership background and how he determined that the skills he highlights are

really the ones that will make the average team into a highly successful one. He does reference

many sources for his conclusions and includes references to other works in the notes section.

Section 1 of the book, which talks about building safety within teams immediately

reminded me of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and the human need to fulfill certain basic

physiological needs (pg. 106). Coyle’s building safety is an organizationally based way of

meeting those physiological needs and eliminating the things that scare us. The fear in this

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example is not a fear of physical danger but a fear of being wrong or a fear of being vulnerable in

front of others. By establishing a safe space for us to work, where we do not have to focus on

our own “safety”, we are free to identify with our co-workers, develop relationships, and satisfy

our need to belong. This also establishes a level of interconnectedness between the team

members that is difficult to replicate. There are also many ways that the concept of

communication is used in each of Coyle’s examples. Two of my favorite ways are that he says

we should always overcommunicate and avoid sandwich feedback. The avoidance of sandwich

feedback, where we give negative feedback in between good feedback, is new to me. I learned

this methodology of delivering feedback some time ago and had always thought it was solid

feedback. Coyle suggests that we should separate out the negative feedback and always provide

it in person to ensure that the feedback is understood as he feels the sandwich feedback method

“leads to confusion, as people tend to focus either entirely on the positive or entirely on the

negative” (Location 1175, Kindle Edition). Coyle says we should overcommunicate our

listening as well as overcommunication expectations and I agree with both suggestions.

Overcommunicating in Coyle’s world is being “explicit and persistent about sending big, clear

signals that established those expectations, modeled cooperation, and aligned language and roles

to maximize helping behavior” (Location 2072, Kindle Edition). This communication concept is

a critical part of team building. In fact, the types of communication that Coyle highlights

throughout the book help to “establish clear and inspiring goals” (pg. 235) as well as ensuring

that everyone “clearly understands his or her role in the overall successful functioning of the

group” (pg. 235). Many of the topics that the groups in Coyle’s book focus on are the basic

elements of team building including encouraging standards of excellence (proficiency and

creativity), striving for unified commitment, and providing a collaborative climate (pg. 236).

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 Many of the leaders that were mentioned in the book are leaders that could be viewed as

transformational leaders because of their approach to leading their teams. Transformational

leadership involves key characteristics such as being creative, interactive, and empowering (pg.

110). The creative and interactive aspects of transformational leadership are the aspects that I

feel occurred most often in the book. One focus of creative leaders is that they “go looking for

“trouble” by posing questions that challenge current products, practices, procedures, and beliefs”

(pg. 113). This was something that Coyle discussed in his stories about Disney, the Navy Seals,

and Gramercy Tavern where we see leaders taking a step back and asking how things can be

done better. At Disney it was through a reorganization of work space, team structure, and

creative process that eliminated executive leadership from making creative decisions. With the

Navy Seals it was not taking no for an answer and practicing all possible outcomes when a

higher-level leader refused to allow the mission to be changed in a way that guaranteed success.

I really enjoyed this book for several reasons. The stories about the high performing

teams were very interesting to me as they spanned several different types of “teams” from the

Navy Seals, to movie development teams, and even bank robbers. The book is written in an

engaging and informative manner and at times is funny, scary, and heartwarming. I would

recommend this book to anyone who is interested in the concepts of team building and fostering

strong company cultures. My interest in this book initially was to find some actions or methods

that I could use to better connect with the folks on my team and in other departments at my

company. I believe I got some suggestions, but not as many as I was hoping. I also found that

the book gave more of a ten-thousand-foot view of concepts rather than the concrete actionable

examples I had hoped would be included. I also feel that some of his examples are repetitive and

yet unclear. I would love a summary of the points for each section of the book because I feel

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like many of them were lost in the examples. I think he intended the actions chapter at the end of

each section to give clear cut instructions on what to do to implement the suggestions, but I need

more than what he provided. I would recommend the book for an interesting read with tons of

examples of high performing teams that could be modeled elsewhere. It’s a positive feelgood

book which is great for raising optimism about different team-based situations. I wouldn’t

recommend the book to someone that is looking to learn about leadership within high performing

groups or to someone looking to build a high performing team unless they already had some

experience in this area and are looking for additional nuggets of wisdom. While I enjoyed this

book, I wish I had selected a different one for this review.