The recent US election demonstrated that almost half of all Americans have a very different World View than another almost half of Americans. The people in the gap between the Trump voters and the Biden voters may be only 10% of the US population. How is it possible that so many people see the country so differently, when the facts on the ground are the same?
The data about coronavirus infections, unemployment, food insecurity, the stock market, interest rates, evictions, racial injustice, police reform, public safety, economic disparities and federal recovery programs such as the PPP, EIDL and supplemental unemployment insurance are largely understood. The differences come from the emphasis given to one set of facts over another.
President Trump emphasized the stock market and public safety while President-Elect Biden emphasized the coronavirus and racial injustice.
How do people coalesce around an idea as obscure as a World View?
One resource to consider is The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups by Daniel Coyle
These concepts are not political. They apply to all kinds of teams and grassroots groups.
Culture: from the Latin cultus, which means care
Culture means "what you care about". Do team members care more about getting along or achieving status? Do voters care more about personal benefit or the common good? Does a pharmaceutical company working on a prototype coronavirus vaccine care more about getting to market first or identifying potential side effects and contraindications for their selected formula?
Maybe it was where my head was at in the weird year that is 2020, or maybe this book’s structure laid out the evidence in the early chapters and saved conclusions for the end, but my first sticky note isn’t until Chapter 14.
Creating Effective Policing Strategies
This story seems relevant to the Black Lives Matter protests that have continued all summer as well as the Police Reform movement in New York State.
Coyle shares a story about the 2004 European Football [Soccer] Championships in Portugal. The 2000 tournament in Belgium had resulted in significant damage to property, injured residents, fire hoses and tear gas. By the end of the tournament more than 1000 English fans had been arrested.
The police in Portugal engaged Clifford Stott who had developed a strategy for dealing with English Hooligans who followed their teams. The strategy involved re-training police to engage with the fans in a relaxed and friendly manner. No phalanxes, riot gear, shields or batons. The police trained for crowd engagement were even uniformed differently so that fans would be able to identify the police assigned to support them.
The point of his argument is that disproportionate use of force by police is what causes riots, not fan intent. In 2004 more than a million fans visited Portugal and only one English fan was arrested. Only 0.4% of police encounters qualified as "disorderly". The only incidents of violence occurred in communities using the "helmet & shield" system.
Creating Effective Creative Teams
For this example, Coyle uses Ed Catmull of Walt Disney and Pixar Studios, which have produced several highly successful animated films including Finding Nemo and Frozen. He also mentions Steve Jobs of Apple, who also had the skill of building creative teams.
This concept reminds me of the book’s prolog: a study comparing teams of four business school students and four kindergarten students on a team project in Japan. The kindergarteners won!
The team environment needs to be truly safe for negative feedback for improvement to occur. “There is a tendency to value the idea as opposed to the person, or team of people, but that’s not accurate. 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.”
Catmull is also realistic. “You have to go through some failures, and survive them, and support each other through them. And then, after that, you really begin to trust one another.” (Stephen Covey: Speed of Trust)
An interesting aspect of the Pixar story is that the team of people remained the same. Catmull put in new systems and the team members learned new ways of interacting. Pixar created a culture of shared learning, building ownership and aligning group energy that resulted in higher creativity and ultimately several block-buster films.
Creating Shared Purpose
Successful cultures use crisis to crystalize purpose. Building purpose is a never-ending process of trying, failing, reflecting and above all, learning. High-purpose environments don’t descend on groups from on high; they are dug out of the ground, over and over, as a group navigates its problems together and evolves to meet the challenges of a fast-changing world.
Seven Suggestions to Implement With Your Team
- Name and rank your priorities
- Be ten times as clear about your priorities as you think you should be
- Figure out where your group aims for proficiency and where it aims for creativity
- Embrace the use of catchphrases
- Measure what really matters
- Use artifacts
- Focus on bar-setting behaviors
I wish you well this Holiday Season.
Be thankful for what you have and give to those in need.
