Simon G's Blog

I enjoyed reading "The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups" by Daniel Coyle. It has lots of great stories about groups in various fields (SEALs, sports teams, corporate environments, creative companies, aircraft crew and more) and the various (often subtle) attributes that makes these teams successful. Key takeaways for me were: Safety is the foundation on which strong culture is built. Our brain is obsessed with psychological safety and we require lots of signalling over and over to feel safe. A sense of belonging is easy to destroy and hard to build. Patterns of interaction of successful groups that have good chemistry often include: Close physical proximity, often in circles Profuse amounts of eye contact Physical touch (handshakes, fist bumps, hugs) Lots of short, energetic exchanges (no long speeches) High levels of mixing; everyone talks to everyone Few interruptions Lots of questions Intense, active listening Humour, laughter...

Understanding how people work and what motivates them is important to getting the most out of them and having a good working relationship. I have been working with an offshore company for the past 6 months in New Zealand, with whom we have partnered to do some work to build a technology solution. Over these past 6 months I have observed some differences in the way they operate than what I have previously experienced working with New Zealand companies, and once I had identified these differences this has made it easier to communicate. Having different cultures brings different dynamics to a project, which is great in terms of having people who look at a problem space from a different perspetive; these are my observations with this particular company and the people we have on the ground in New Zealand. 1. Safety in numbers. In general, with many of the people I am dealing with (in particular the technical people, not so much with the Business Analysts), I have observed that they are not...