YouSaid · the spoken record

Daniel Coyle

lines on the record: 43
first: 2018-04-22
most recent: 2018-04-22
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Yeah, no, I'd say the work of Adam Grant has been really powerful. I'm sure some of your readers know his work. He's a very creative and forward-thinking professor, studies organizational dynamics at Penn and has written several books give and take, originals, wrote a book called Option B with Cheryl Sandberg. Just the creativity and energy that he brings to every project and every discussion is inspiring. And the other person I'd say is my brother Morris, who's really good at thinking through these concepts and helping me. A lot of this stuff is simple, but it ain't easy to be simple. So finding kind of the deeper, seeing the deeper landscapes and these things that are right in front of our noses, like culture and groups. Super useful. Not that anyone can go out and call up my brother. I guess I'll give you his phone number if you want it.”
2018-04-22 · We Study Billionaires · TIP187: The Culture Code w/ Daniel Coyle (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of purpose. We're going here. We're going to pound the rock. That's what's important. We're not going over there. We're going here.”
2018-04-22 · We Study Billionaires · TIP187: The Culture Code w/ Daniel Coyle (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I'd take the first 30 seconds and I would just show a video of a flock of birds moving together because I think that captures better than anything else. There's these great, actually your listeners, Google the word murmuration, they're these starlings, these small birds that they're amazing at flocking together and they come apart and they come together. They look like these intelligent clouds. They're beautiful to watch. And because that's what good culture is. And that happens not because of some magical chemistry they have. Their brains are like as big as a grain of rice, right? It happens because they send really clear signals about where they are and where they're going. And that's what good cultures do. Good culture is not about some mysterious chemistry. It's about clarity. It's about setting really clear signals. We're connected, belonging cues, really clear signals. We share information, vulnerability loops, they're called. You have to loop, you have a loop of vulnerability. And really clear signals.”
2018-04-22 · We Study Billionaires · TIP187: The Culture Code w/ Daniel Coyle (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's pretty candorous. Like, it's going to be a disaster. But think more deeply about what he said there. Ask for help. Look for me 10 times today. I want you all, if there's a problem, what we're here to help. We're connected to you. You're not alone. It's a signal of warm candor that's real candor. You really need to look or it really, if you try to do this without any help, it's going to be a disaster, but I'm here for you. So that's the kind of message that can be sent in these kind of good feedback conversations. It's I'm giving you this signal because you're part of this group and we have high standards here. And I believe you can make those standards. That feedback is powerful because it doesn't just deliver brutal honesty. It delivers connection.”
2018-04-22 · We Study Billionaires · TIP187: The Culture Code w/ Daniel Coyle (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of them are sort of like they're like the Pixar in the restaurant world. If you've ever eaten at any of Danny Myers' restaurants, you probably remember it because the service is so incredible and the teams are so well trained and the experience is so marvelous. So I studied Danny Meyer for the book and I was there when a new server who had been training for six months had her first day at the front of the house. Her first day it's sort of like first day in the big leagues after months and months of training. And I saw her manager lean over to her just before the people are about to walk in. It's about her moment to shine. And her manager leans over and says something to her. And I'm wondering, what's he going to say? Is he going to say something really supportive? Go get him? You know, is he going to say, what's he going to say? And what he said was, hey, Whitney, if you don't ask me for help 10 times today, it'll be a disaster, which is a hell of a thing to say, really, right?”
2018-04-22 · We Study Billionaires · TIP187: The Culture Code w/ Daniel Coyle (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You putting your finger on are super interesting nuance here. There's a certain reaction to this where it's like, okay, we've got to be open and vulnerable. We've got to be brutally honest. I'm just going to lay it out there. And there's a certain person that reacts to this by just saying, all right, I'm going to let you have it, right? We're going to be brutally honest here. But when you're brutally honest, you're actually creating a culture of brutality. That's the real signal you're sending. You're sending a signal of brutality. And the successful way to go is to avoid brutal honesty instead strive for warm candor. Now, warm candor sends two signals. It sends a signal of connection along with the truth. You don't just send the truth in a brutal way. You always have that tethered to a signal of connection. And the most beautiful example I saw of that beyond Popovic, who we've already talked about, who does that really, really well, happened at our restaurant called Grammarcy Tavern, which is run by Danny Meyer. Danny Meyer runs about 20 restaurants.”
2018-04-22 · We Study Billionaires · TIP187: The Culture Code w/ Daniel Coyle (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In that sense of having some skin in the game, of having people who are genuinely invested defeated all the other efforts. That's sort of the killer app of connection, vulnerability. It sent this signal of really clear vulnerability that made people want to be a part of it and made people want to give effort. So that motivated cohesion that great teams have doesn't come out of nowhere. It comes out of sending really clear signals that, hey, we're in this together.”
2018-04-22 · We Study Billionaires · TIP187: The Culture Code w/ Daniel Coyle (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They sent out this signal, this email, and the contest begins, and the government initially thinks this is going to take weeks for people to locate these 10 balloons in random locations across the entire continent. On the MIT team succeeds in nine hours. With a completely makeshift team. None of whom know each other, all of whom are united by this simple signal of vulnerability to say, hey, we're doing this crazy process.”
2018-04-22 · We Study Billionaires · TIP187: The Culture Code w/ Daniel Coyle (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There was one team from MIT that didn't do any of that. They actually didn't find out about the contest until like five days beforehand. So all they did was send an email. And the email said, hey, we're doing this crazy balloon hunting contest. You're on a chain of people who find these balloons. If you or anybody you send this email to finds the balloons, you get a share in the reward. So it was a really simple signal. It had vulnerability in it because they were sharing the reward with the people they worked with. The other people weren't. They were just sort of saying, let's build a team and everybody on the team will get the reward.”
2018-04-22 · We Study Billionaires · TIP187: The Culture Code w/ Daniel Coyle (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There's this governmental outfit called DARPA. They do research on impossible projects. And they did this one, they did this one where they were trying to figure out how to get information quickly, almost as if mimicking kind of a virus outbreak. How do we find out what's happening when we don't know what's happening? In this really fascinating contest, they released 10 large balloons tethered to the ground at unknown locations across America. And they gave people about a month. They said, assemble a team. To find out the precise location of these 10 balloons. And so, of course, it was like catnip to every geek in America. They started assembling these teams with all of this GPS data and social media sharing and satellites and all these organizations came together because there was a $40,000 prize.”
2018-04-22 · We Study Billionaires · TIP187: The Culture Code w/ Daniel Coyle (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In our bodies, we know. Physical exercise makes you strong. No pain, no game to actually have that pain is what gives you the gain. The same is true with group life. The same is true in our groups, that awkward, difficult, like, ah, I screwed that up and you screwed that up and what happened? Let's talk about it. That awkwardness is actually what fuels improvement because it lets you share real information, accurate information, and it lets you build a shared mental model of what you're trying to do.”
2018-04-22 · We Study Billionaires · TIP187: The Culture Code w/ Daniel Coyle (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The thing that really stands out is that they're awkward. They're hard. It's really hard after you try your best at something to come back and say, you know, I screwed that up. And I think you might have screwed that up too. And they end up being these sort of painful emotional, difficult meetings. And they are by far the most important, powerful meetings that the seals have. At Pixar, they have the same meetings in what's called a brain trust. Every movie is brain trusted several times through its development. They watch a draft of the movie and then some of the best storytellers of Pixar circle up, get together, and start taking it apart. It's not pretty. It's truly hard to see someone who's a director who's bringing them this precious thing that they've spent months and years building. And the people just kind of almost print it mercilessly say this doesn't work. That doesn't work. This doesn't work. That doesn't work. It's really hard. It's really, really, really powerful and important. And the AR and the brain trust are the calisthenic that lets the group be strong.”
2018-04-22 · We Study Billionaires · TIP187: The Culture Code w/ Daniel Coyle (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And faster than ever. And so this idea of vulnerability, of saying, look, I might be the CEO, but I don't know what you should do. I have made mistakes in the past. These are the mistakes I've made in the past. Ends up being really the most powerful way that an organization can ignite the sharing of information. Vulnerability isn't about mushy emotions. It is about sharing information. If you are open about the mistakes you make and the weaknesses you have, you can perform better. You can share a mental model. And the cool part that I saw were the organizations that had refined this into an organizational habit. They weren't just doing kind of free-range vulnerability. They had these vulnerability habits that operated almost like calisthenics. With the seals, they do something called an AAR, an after-action review. They do it after every training mission and after every mission. The team comes off the helicopter, they circle up, and they start talking about what went wrong and what went right and what they're going to do differently next time. And they're really...”
2018-04-22 · We Study Billionaires · TIP187: The Culture Code w/ Daniel Coyle (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Like, that's a pretty good model. It can work when problems are really simple, but we live in a world, no matter what business you're in, where problems are really complex and problems are really fast moving. And the idea that one person can be certain about what to do is increasingly ridiculous. You know, the idea that one person can hold in their head, that one army commander can be back at headquarters and have in their head what the team should do rather than that team on the ground making decisions. The idea that one business owner can know what all his people should do rather than that team on the ground reacting in real time. I mean, there's a metaphor that kept coming into mind while I was writing the book. And it's of a flock of birds navigating through a forest all as one, right? And they're solving problems in real time. They're not getting radio information back from headquarters over where they should turn left here and turn right here. They're solving problems in real time. And that is really the landscape we live in now. It's moving faster.”
2018-04-22 · We Study Billionaires · TIP187: The Culture Code w/ Daniel Coyle (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's a great question. I love his response. Why should we show vulnerability? Groups that hide weaknesses from themselves will never be strong and groups that share weaknesses are strong because of it. When I visited these cultures that I visited, these Pixar and Navy SEAL Team 6, these top performing cultures, I was continually surprised by this pattern. And the pattern was that leaders would be extremely open about their mistakes, extremely open. In fact, the Navy SEAL commander that I spent time with, a guy named Dave Cooper, who trained the troops that got bin Laden, put it this way. He said, the most important four words a leader can say are I screwed that up. Which is incredible to think about. We think about the Navy SEALs, we think about any group, we think about them being bulletproof, confident to know with certainty about where they're going. But actually, that model of sort of the leader is the authoritarian holder of the knowledge that's worked for a while.”
2018-04-22 · We Study Billionaires · TIP187: The Culture Code w/ Daniel Coyle (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The windshield, and it works kind of like emotional GPS, like when you bump into a problem and you're on the spurs, what comes into your head, pound the rock. So it's this sort of a design process, really. And I think that's what people miss about purpose. They sort of think, oh, it's just going to be this halo that we get and we're just going to be able to do it. But no, it actually takes a lot of effort, intent, and one of the best things you can do is really study how other groups do it.”
2018-04-22 · We Study Billionaires · TIP187: The Culture Code w/ Daniel Coyle (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Didn't sort of descend on them. They dug it out of the ground. They found something that really resonated. That story resonated for them. And it's the act of creating it and sharing it that make it powerful. It's not just putting a poster on the wall. It's constantly living that and sharing that in every possible way. They're sort of flooding the zone with this story, this purpose. So purpose is something that sort of is more of an architectural question, like, okay, we can't just pick something random. We actually have to pick something that matters. We actually have to pick something that resonates with us. We have to pick the right language. We have to pick the right story. And the places that I visited, the cultures were very smart about doing that. They spent a ton of time thinking about sort of building what you might think of as a mantra map. The handful of sayings, metaphors, symbols that really make sense for them and that they broadcast, that they feel.”
2018-04-22 · We Study Billionaires · TIP187: The Culture Code w/ Daniel Coyle (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Pounding away with his hammer, sledgehammer on this rock. And the passerby says, Why are you doing that? And the stone cutter replies, because when the rock breaks, I will not know if it is that blow or the hundred that came before that broke it. Nice story. Well, Popovic captures that story. He thinks something about it. And he has it echoed throughout the organization. When you walk in their practice facility, you see an actual rock and an actual hammer. The mantra that he's created is pound the rock. And when you go in their locker room, there's about five different languages spoken on the spurs. That quote from the stone cutter, that little parable, is written in each of those languages all around the locker room. He talks about pounding the rock all the time. The players talk about pounding the rock all the time. What they've done is that they've used that mantra sort of to create a North Star for them. This is who we are. This is what we do.”
2018-04-22 · We Study Billionaires · TIP187: The Culture Code w/ Daniel Coyle (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Repeating these mantras. You'll hear the same mantras over and over again if you're a Pixar or a Navy SEAL Team 6. Even in Navy SEAL Team 6, they have mantras they'll say like we're the quiet professionals. We shoot, move and communicate. The only easy day was yesterday. And they keep sort of repeating those mantras over and over again. So when you first get there, it feels a little like you're at summer camp. It feels a little like I began to see that at first I thought, oh my God, I'm in the wrong place. But then you realize, no, wait a minute. The fact that everybody is sharing these really clear mental models, everybody's sharing these really clear mantras. It's almost like a map. It's almost like they're building this windshield of purpose that is made up of these smaller things, these smaller metaphors and stories that they tell each other, these mantras that they repeat to each other over and over again. The San Antonio Spurs are a perfect example. So Papovich came across this book and it told a story. It was an old sort of parable. It told the story of a stone cutter. And the stone cutter is”
2018-04-22 · We Study Billionaires · TIP187: The Culture Code w/ Daniel Coyle (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So funny purpose and values. You know, if you were to look at sort of companies, senses, and groups, senses of values and purpose and write them down, we have a typical convention that those purposes sort of descend from on high, right? That we get a group sense of purpose from our hearts. And when you look at really good groups, however, what you see is they're not sort of digging them out of their hearts. They're not emanating those sense of purpose. They're sort of unearthing them. They're digging them from beneath. When I visited a lot of these places, it actually was kind of funny because when I'd first go with in some of these groups and I decided to visit them based on them being the top 1% of performers in their domain with sustained success. And so I found myself, okay, I'm visiting Pixar, I'm visiting Navy SEAL Team 6. I'm visiting the Spurs. And when you first visit those places, they feel, and this sounds funny to say, but they feel a little bit cheesy because the people are kind of.”
2018-04-22 · We Study Billionaires · TIP187: The Culture Code w/ Daniel Coyle (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And because Papavich has created such a culture of connection and selflessness that shows up, it shows up on the scoreboard and it shows up on his own record that these twin signals of telling the truth and loving them to death actually helps unlock the group's potential.”
2018-04-22 · We Study Billionaires · TIP187: The Culture Code w/ Daniel Coyle (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, you can look up like with any team, you can kind of, especially with sports, you can add up the perform the individual performers and make a pretty reasonable forecast about how many games they should win. And they do that with coaches, you know, based on the talent that a coach has, how many games should they have won. And when you graph all the history of the NBA, Popovic is out there like Mars. You know, you've got all the other coaches grouped up and then you've got Popovic winning way more games than he should have. His teams are literally adding up to more than the sum of their parts. They're more selfless. They are, you know, in basketball, as in life, there are these moments where you have to make a decision. Am I going to support my teammate? Or am I going to”
2018-04-22 · We Study Billionaires · TIP187: The Culture Code w/ Daniel Coyle (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Or I'm going to be really nice to you. But that's a false dichotomy. The truth is, you can do both. You can tell people the truth because you love them to death.”
2018-04-22 · We Study Billionaires · TIP187: The Culture Code w/ Daniel Coyle (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Filling their cups. And it was this astonishing act of connection that really helped the team recover from that and go on and win. So the way that he connects, and it's he's giving them very tough feedback. As one of the coaches said, Pap will do two things. He'll tell you the truth and he'll love you to death. And for me, that really captures what great leadership does. He doesn't hold back on the feedback. It's not like you have to choose between excellence and belonging. He gives them both. He gives them the absolute toughest feedback and it's it can be very difficult at times when he's yelling at the team, but he's given them the absolute peak moment of Karen connection and love. And those are the words that he uses. He talks about a love. He talks about filling their cups and hugging them and holding them. And that kind of combination, I think, is revelatory because we typically see those two things as a trade-off, either I'm going to really tell you the truth.”
2018-04-22 · We Study Billionaires · TIP187: The Culture Code w/ Daniel Coyle (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Vehicle for connection. That team eats together more often than most families. I mean, they have different size dinners for different groups in the dinner. The coaches all go to dinner before every game. And at the end of the season, they get an album or the menu of all the places they've eaten and the labels of the wines that they enjoyed together. It is phenomenal to see, actually, the best comeback that the Spurs have ever made actually took place in a restaurant. They had this devastating loss in the finals of the NBA of in-game six. They were about to win. They lost. And Papovich, rather than have everybody sulking the locker room and people were destroyed. They really had the title locked up and they lost it. And afterwards, he has everyone whoop go right to the restaurant and circle up as a team. And he spends the whole time, almost like the father of a bride at a wedding, greeting everybody, spending time, making sure that their plates are full, bringing in their families, having conversations, hugging. Everyone is reconnecting. He calls.”
2018-04-22 · We Study Billionaires · TIP187: The Culture Code w/ Daniel Coyle (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That they were going to go into, you know, watch the game tape. And they go in and they start to play the tape, but it wasn't a game tape, actually. It was a CNN documentary about the history of the Civil Rights Act. It was the anniversary of the Civil Rights Voting Act. And they watched that. And then Popovic starts asking questions like, okay, what would you have done? You players. What would you guys have done? What did your parents do? Tell me about that. Genuinely curious, just like the WIPRO, right? It's the same belonging queue. It's like, what would you do if we were marooned on a desert island? Tell me about you, that interaction. He's not just telling them they need to go left or right or shoot more or shoot less. That is just that intense curiosity that he has about the group that he's in and his ability to connect. And then the other thing they do, which was really terrific, was the way that he uses food. Every human being has to eat. And Papovich is keenly aware of this. And so they use food as the...”
2018-04-22 · We Study Billionaires · TIP187: The Culture Code w/ Daniel Coyle (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was fascinated by the San Antonio spurs just because they have been able to create such a strong culture without drafting at the top. They're not getting the best players. They have to add up to be more than the sum of their parts. They've been so consistent. But most of all, because they are something that I think we're all trying to do. We're all trying to be excellent. Our goal in running a business is not just to have everybody feel warm and cozy, right? It's to perform. How do you have that sense of cohesion with this bar of excellence where, look, we've got to perform at a certain level or we're not going to succeed. And he really captured that for me because going into it, we all know, sports fans know, basketball fans know that Papovich is probably the grouchiest coach in sports. He's red in the face all the time. He's yelling at his players a lot. But what I saw up close, I visited for a few days and the first day I got there, it was a day right after they had lost. And the first thing that happened was that there was a video session. And I thought.”
2018-04-22 · We Study Billionaires · TIP187: The Culture Code w/ Daniel Coyle (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Think like a designer. How can I bring in more collisions? How can I sort of bring light and water and warmth and help people grow?”
2018-04-22 · We Study Billionaires · TIP187: The Culture Code w/ Daniel Coyle (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I was sort of surprised at how laid back he was, I have to say, like kind of really at home in letting whatever the collision was, let it happen. He described it a really interesting way. He said, look, I am not. You know, if you think of Zappos as like a greenhouse, right? He's trying to grow this culture there. And the way he described it, he goes, look, I'm not the plant that everyone wants to be like. Like my job is not to be the ideal Zapos person. I'm the architect of the greenhouse. Like I need to put the sunlight and the soil and the water in and just let whatever's going to happen happen. The way he saw himself so clearly as a designer of social interaction was really powerful for me. He's not trying to embody in a lot of groups the head person embodies the qualities that he wants the culture to have. He didn't have any of that illusions. He wasn't trying to be the best zaponian that exists. He was just trying to.”
2018-04-22 · We Study Billionaires · TIP187: The Culture Code w/ Daniel Coyle (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“How much they value that kind of connection, that kind of repeated collision. And there's this crazy new science called sociometrics, which is sort of like money ball for the office. And it's based on capturing the data of normal social interaction. And it's captured through you where it's kind of big brothery. You wear these little things around your neck and it'll capture the energy in your voice. It'll capture whether you're face to face with someone. It'll capture”
2018-04-22 · We Study Billionaires · TIP187: The Culture Code w/ Daniel Coyle (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's a bit ironic because he's quite a low key person for running Zappos. You wouldn't imagine him being quite as low-key as he is. But he's always focused on something he calls collisions. And collisions are literally how many times during a day you bump into somebody in your group. And so what Tony does is when you walk around with him, he's constantly alert to where you are in the ecosystem and interesting people that you might want to bump into. And all he wants to do is have you have a conversation with them. He doesn't care what it's about. He doesn't care when it happens, but he wants to connect people. Actually, he had somebody who invited them out to sort of explore the idea of working at Zappos. And that person, he sent them an email beforehand and he said, okay, welcome. Here's a list of 15 people I'd like you to talk to. Let me know after you talk to them and I'll give you another list. That was basically all the instruction she got. She thought it was kind of a joke. Like, what really?”
2018-04-22 · We Study Billionaires · TIP187: The Culture Code w/ Daniel Coyle (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of connection because that's how our brains are built. Our brains are built to worry about connection all the time. Our brains are built to like question our connection to groups, even when we know logically we're well connected. So these groups have kind of mastered the communication to the deep brain, the deep parts of our brain that are constantly worried about our connection to that group. And they're sending that signal over and over and over again that we're connected, these belonging cues.”
2018-04-22 · We Study Billionaires · TIP187: The Culture Code w/ Daniel Coyle (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Whatever you did before, you're a movie maker now. We need you to help make our films better. And then every day, they have a whole group meeting. It's called a daily. And they review the footage in animation. You only make a few seconds of footage each day. The whole company gets an opportunity to review the footage of the previous day and offer suggestions. So you could have a barista making a suggestion on some plot point in a Pixar movie. That is a behavior. That is a belonging cue. the smart groups flood the zone with belonging cues. They're constantly sending this signal over and over again. We are connected. We share a future. I see you. I'm interested in what you have to say. That sounds like such a simple, soft thing. It sounds like, oh, it's just Kumbaya. In fact, it's really one of the smartest, clearest things that any group can do to send this signal.”
2018-04-22 · We Study Billionaires · TIP187: The Culture Code w/ Daniel Coyle (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Not seven percent, not 70%, 270%, because belonging happens in these moments where we get a crystal clear signal. We are connected. I see you. We're not managing status in that moment. We're actually expressing a social connection through our behavior. And teams and groups that are good at that take that WIPRO idea and they apply it especially to threshold moments. The moment you enter a group is by far the most important moment you have in that group. Pixar does a beautiful job with this, actually. When you're hired at Pixar, whether you're a barista in a cafe or a director, you get the exact same experience. You go into the auditorium and you sit in the fifth row because that's apparently that's like where directors like to sit. The fifth row is the best seat. I didn't realize that. You sit in the fifth row and the president of Pixar comes out. His name is Ed Capmull. And he says the following sentence. He says.”
2018-04-22 · We Study Billionaires · TIP187: The Culture Code w/ Daniel Coyle (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And the one hour experiment was really simple. They took two groups of new hires. The first group, let's call them group A, they got this presentation for an hour on how great it was to work at Wipro. They met a star performer. They learned about the history of the company. They got a tour. And that was it for one hour. The second group, Group B, they got a very different experience. Basically, they flipped it. Instead of being a presentation about Wipro, they started asking the new hires questions like, hey, tell me about what happens on your best day. Tell me about what happens on your worst day. If we were on a desert island, they asked, what skills would you bring to our survival if we were marooned on a desert island? What skills would you bring? And at the end of it, they got a shirt, but the shirt said their name on it. It didn't say Whipro. It said their name. And then seven months later, they tracked the retention in those two groups. And the retention in the second group went up 270%.”
2018-04-22 · We Study Billionaires · TIP187: The Culture Code w/ Daniel Coyle (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's right. The real world isn't like kindergarten building a marshmallow tower. The real world is more complicated. The answer is that safety is created in these moments where we deliver what are called belonging cues. Belonging cues are really short, simple signals, behavioral signals that are sent that say, hey, we share a future. I see you as a person. I see your whole person. We are connected in some deep way. A beautiful way that actually is a kind of a cool story about belonging cues and safety. It involves a company called Wipro. And Wipro is a call center. And like a lot of call centers, they struggled with retention. Like it's hard to get people to work at a call center because working at a call center kind of sucks. It's a hard place to work. So every year, 50% of their people would leave and they tried to fix it. They tried to improve the perks. They tried to improve the campus. They tried to improve the work. None of it worked except for this one hour experiment that they did.”
2018-04-22 · We Study Billionaires · TIP187: The Culture Code w/ Daniel Coyle (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The adult groups all look like they're being smooth, but in fact, their interactions are being hindered by status management. There's a little whisper in the back of their minds. Where do I fit in here? Is it okay to say that? Who's in charge? And so that hinders cooperation. It hinders ideation. It hinders iteration. It hinders innovation. But the kids, the kindergartners don't have any problem with that. They're not worried about status. They're just doing stuff together. And if they see a problem, they reach in and grab it and fix it. And there's no better feedback than having your tower fall down. That gives you really, really good feedback on what to build. They're safe. They don't worry about status. And because they don't worry about status, they consistently build a taller, a better result. They get a better tower. And when we think about groups, we normally don't value safety. We think safety is sort of like the icing on the cupcake. We think it's like this extra thing that you get.”
2018-04-22 · We Study Billionaires · TIP187: The Culture Code w/ Daniel Coyle (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They divvy up the roles and they start working. And it looks gorgeous. Like it looks perfect. It looks very cooperative and smooth. The kindergartners don't do that exactly. They just sort of start eating a bunch of marshmallows and it's very chaotic. And it just is absolute energy just happening. And if you had to bet your life savings, which group is going to win, most of us would bet on one of the adult groups because that's our mental model of cooperation. We focus on what we can see. And when we see verbal experienced intelligent individuals interacting in such a smooth way, we think, well, that's going to add up into an intelligent, smooth group. It's going to add up to performance. That's our mental model. But if we actually look at who wins, the kindergartners win. They win every single time. And the reason is really simple, because our mental model of group performance is wrong. It doesn't include the two most important factors. It doesn't include status management, and it doesn't include safety.”
2018-04-22 · We Study Billionaires · TIP187: The Culture Code w/ Daniel Coyle (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A guy, there's a guy named Peter Skillman, and he got obsessed with that question what makes certain groups perform better than others? We all know that certain groups add up to be more than the sum of their parts and certain groups don't. And so what's that made up? So he devised a way of exploring it through a context. Contest was really simple. Who can build the tallest tower with the following materials? 20 pieces of raw spaghetti, a yard of tape, and a single standard size marshmallow. The only rule marshmallow has to go on the top. And the teams he got to do it were kind of interesting. He had teams of four. He had teams of CEOs. He had teams of MBAs. He had teams of lawyers, and he had teams of kindergartners. Ready set go. Everybody starts building. And when they begin, all the adult groups start out in the same way. They talk. They talk about what they're going to do. They make a plan and they decide on ideas and they hone those ideas.”
2018-04-22 · We Study Billionaires · TIP187: The Culture Code w/ Daniel Coyle (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's a set of interactions that creates what we call culture. So, you know, I got kind of obsessed with that mystery. It took me about five years to visit all the places and write the books. And it was so fun. I didn't want it to stop, actually. It was kind of funny. I was having so much fun reporting it. But yeah, it ended up, you know, culture feels like magic, but it ain't.”
2018-04-22 · We Study Billionaires · TIP187: The Culture Code w/ Daniel Coyle (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I want you to do something for me. And the coach held out a tennis ball and said, I want you to catch this. And she tossed the girl the ball, and the girl caught it. And in that second, that girl went from being an outsider to being connected in some way, to being a part of this group. And I just got kind of fascinated and obsessed with what's that made of? How did they make that girl go from being outside to inside, from being sort of a stranger to being on this team? And so I started traveling around looking at really, really high performing groups, you know, Pixar and Navy SEAL Team 6, San Antonio Spurs, IDO, Zappos. And looking at the sort of tennis balls they throw, those moments where they create that magic, that connection. And we all are familiar with that feeling of, you know, God, there's just something about that restaurant or there's something about that school or there's something about that family. And it feels like magic, but what I found out visiting the groups and in looking at the science underneath is that it's not magic.”
2018-04-22 · We Study Billionaires · TIP187: The Culture Code w/ Daniel Coyle (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Years old, showed up for her first lesson. And there's this interaction. It took like five seconds, but it was this amazing interaction where she showed up first day, door opens, she's standing there with her new tennis racket in a plastic grocery bag, nervous her first day. And this lead coach, probably the most famous tennis coach in Russia, spots her, goes over to this girl, and says, hey, just a quick interaction. He says, hey, I'm glad you're here.”
2018-04-22 · We Study Billionaires · TIP187: The Culture Code w/ Daniel Coyle (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, that's right. It requires an addiction, actually, to keep it going. You have to get addicted to the mystery, to the quest. And I guess I kind of fell in love with the mystery. You know, I've written about performance, high performance for a long time. I have this job where I sort of travel around. I look at people who are really good at their individual skill and try to figure out what makes them tick. And so I had this longstanding writing books about that and exploring that in many ways. I kept bumping in to this same feeling, which you'd go into a room and it might be filled with tennis players. It might be filled with chess players. It might be a business. It might be a restaurant. But there'd be a vibe. There'd be a feeling in that room of connection and cohesion. It was like these groups were just one single animal almost. And I guess it really came to life for me. I was in Russia. I was at a tennis court. And it was this club that produced all these champions. And I was there on a day where a new player showed up, a girl. She was about.”
2018-04-22 · We Study Billionaires · TIP187: The Culture Code w/ Daniel Coyle (Business Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT