“Vulnerability doesn’t come after trust—it precedes it. Leaping into the unknown, when done alongside others, causes the solid ground of trust to materialize beneath our feet.”― Daniel coyle
Book Publication:
Bantam (January 30, 2018)
Book Summary:
If you’ve ever wondered how some teams always seem to be get better results and enjoy working together, this book highlights how to build, adjust and maintain cultural environments needed to foster supercharged functionality, intentional effective, and exciting innovation within organizations. Coyle name drops some key organizations like Pixar, a renown NBA team, and a special unit of the U.S. Navy Seals to provide examples of how the key concepts that compose a “highly successful group” can be implemented in almost any organization.
Book Review:
Having read a good handful of organizational development business books in grad school, I had very little expectations about the book. I’ve highlighted so much of this book and have taken notes that I intend to keep for the long-term. The conceptual information that Doyle shares was rather approachable and I was able to apply them into real life situations in the office with my department as well as within the small group ministry setting at church. Focusing more on the relational aspect of my teams, while at the same time shifting others towards problem solving rather than the goal of being “happy” has changed group dynamics like I had not imagined. In a ministry setting, it has helped me to open up first to my members, to build deeper and greater trust within the group to help move us all towards getting “work” done. What I mean by “work” is that after we link our present realities with the future kingdom come, it is the attitude and manner in which we should live and work.
Favorite Excerpts:
- “Give a good idea to a mediocre team, and they’ll find a way to screw it up. Give a mediocre idea to a good team, and they’ll find a way to make it better. The goal needs to be to get the team right, get them moving in the right direction, and get them to see where they are making mistakes and where they are succeeding.”
- “While successful culture can look and feel like magic, the truth is that it’s not. Culture is a set of living relationships working toward a shared goal. It’s not something you are. It’s something you do.”
- “Hire people smarter than you. Fail early, fail often. Listen to everyone’s ideas. Face toward the problems. B-level work is bad for your soul. It’s more important to invest in good people than in good ideas.”
- “The road to success is paved with mistakes well handled.”
- “One misconception about highly successful cultures is that they are happy, lighthearted places. This is mostly not the case. They are energized and engaged, but at their core their members are oriented less around achieving happiness than around solving hard problems together. This task involves many moments of high-candor feedback, uncomfortable truth-telling, when they confront the gap between where the group is, and where it ought to be.”
- “High-purpose environments are filled with small, vivid signals designed to create a link between the present moment and a future ideal.”
- “Building purpose in a creative group is not about generating a brilliant moment of breakthrough but rather about building systems that can churn through lots of ideas in order to help unearth the right choices.
Next Book Please 