To redeem a business culture gone bad, try Daniel Coyle's timely habits

If you're curious about how a great organization establishes its culture -- and what you might learn from its successes -- where would you turn? Would you want to talk with an admired company's chief executive? Or perhaps the head of human resources? Or the chief culture officer, if such a position exists?

All those choices seem tempting. But business author Daniel Coyle has taken a radically different route, with a welcome payoff. He knows that great cultures transcend slogans or whiteboard abstractions like "integrity" and "leadership." Otherwise, we'd all have mastered this culture stuff decades ago, which, alas, is not the case.

So in his latest book, The Culture Code, Coyle heads to the front lines, where workplace values and habits are really defined. He introduces us to unheralded doers like Roshi Givechi, a designer at IDEO who specializes in helping creative people get unstuck. We meet Dave Cooper, who became known in the Navy SEALS as an expert in building strong teams. These are the true culture-setters, and Coyle roams from comedy troupes to call centers to see how each of these experts does it.

The good news: Coyle's experts all keep working variants of the same basic playbook. What sustains winning sports teams is surprisingly akin to what works at leading hospitals and restaurants, too. There's no reason the rest of us can't adopt many of these habits. As I read through an advance copy of Coyle's book, here are some of the big, culture-defining concepts that impressed me:

• Make the most of your good listeners. At organizations ranging from Bell Labs to the military, there's a special role for warm, curious colleagues who are uniquely good at drawing out their peers' best insights. Such people have a knack for asking questions that ignite motivation and fresh ideas, Coyle writes. They are the spark plugs in the engine of human cooperation.
• Use flash mentoring. It's hard to form long-term mentoring relationships that work well for both sides. Often, such intense engagements aren't necessary. Emerging talents may be able to get many of the benefits of mentoring simply by shadowing a seasoned pro for a single afternoon.
• See what happens if the leader occasionally disappears. Coyle tells a charming story about the coaching staff of the San Antonio Spurs, which occasionally calls a timeout during a game -- and then says nothing. It's up to the players to figure out what to do. This new responsibility is baffling for a moment, and then becomes empowering. The boss will still be in the picture 95% of the time, but letting go every now and then is a great way of developing stronger, more decisive subordinates.
• Revisit your big projects, after the fact, with a "backbone of humility." That's a phrase borrowed from the Navy SEALS, who systematically reconstruct the key decisions of just-completed missions. These sessions are led by enlisted men, not commanders. The goal is to take hierarchy out of the picture, so that it's safe to dig into "why" . . . and draw out the awkward insights that might make things go better next time.

The Culture Code is packed with other insights that left me marking up my copy with stars, arrows and exclamation marks in the margins. Pay especially close attention to the sections about creating a sense of belonging, transforming vulnerability from a taboo subject to a strength, and reinforcing a shared sense of purpose. And get ready for a surprising message about the reasons why it isn't always necessary to be nice.

One final surprise: the big ideas in this book emerge gently from the vivid stories that enliven every page. That may Coyle's most important contribution. As much as we might want to "fix" culture from the top, it turns out that the strongest cultures are more like coral reefs, built gradually over decades. Success takes hold by the combined force of many small daily habits, constantly reinforcing one another.