Something You Should Know - Why Time Seems to Fly & The Secrets of How Great Teams Work Together

Episode Date: April 30, 2018

In my house, whenever we turn on the microwave oven in the kitchen – it screws up the Wi-Fi. Why is that? And is there anything you can do to prevent that? We start this episode by exploring the microwave/Wi-Fi conflict. (http://io9.com/why-does-your-microwave-oven-mess-with-the-wi-fi-connec-1666117933)  Time sure flies when you are having fun. We’ve all had that experience but have you ever wondered why that is? Why should time seem to travel faster at one time and slower at other times even though time is constant? Is it possible to deliberately make time seem to move faster or slower? Alan Burdick is a staff writer and former senior editor at The New Yorker who spent 10 years researching this phenomenon. The result is his book, Why Time Flies (https://amzn.to/2rd4Rlg) . He joins me to reveal what he discovered.  If you have some vodka around the house, you should know that it is good for more than mixing cocktails. For example, it is an insect repellent and it’s great for washing windows – and that’s just the beginning! (http://mom.me/food/18977-top-10-unusual-uses-alcohol/item/washing-window/) . Listen to discover all the great uses for vodka. We all have to work in teams. Whether it is your family or a team at work or in an organization you belong to. So what is it that makes great teams work so well together? Daniel Coyle, author of the book The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups (https://amzn.to/2HCdGMe) embedded himself in some highly successful groups including the U.S. Navy’s SEAL Team Six, Zappos, the San Antonio Spurs, and several others and he discovered what makes great teams – great. He joins me to share the secrets of highly successful teams. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today on Something You Should Know, why does your microwave oven screw up your Wi-Fi and what can you do about it? Then, the sensation of time. Sometimes it seems to go by really fast. In other words... Time flies when you're having fun, right? When you're having fun, you're not thinking about time. So it's only afterward, when the fun is over over that you realize that time flew. So you're never aware of time flying while you are in it. Plus, vodka is for more than making cocktails. It has some wonderful uses around the house. And we all have to work together in groups with other people. So what is it that makes some groups great? You ever see a flock of birds all moving together as one, Mike?

That's what great groups do. That's Pixar making a movie. That's the SEAL Team 6 on a mission. And those three things, we're connected. We're sharing accurate information. And then they have direction. They have a North Star. What's important?

All this today on Something You Should Know. As a listener to Something You Should Know, I can only assume that you are someone who likes to learn about new and interesting things and bring more knowledge to work for you in your everyday life. I mean, that's kind of what Something You Should Know was all about. And so I want to invite you to listen to another podcast called TED Talks Daily. Now, you know about TED Talks, right? Many of the guests on Something You Should Know have done TED Talks Daily. Now, you know about TED Talks, right? Many of the guests on Something You Should Know

have done TED Talks. Well, you see, TED Talks Daily is a podcast that brings you a new TED Talk every weekday in less than 15 minutes. Join host Elise Hu. She goes beyond the headlines so you can hear about the big ideas shaping our future. Learn about things like sustainable fashion, embracing your

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Today, Something You Should Know with Mike Carruthers. In our house, we have a lot of internet connected devices. We have desktops, laptops, phones, tablets, and all of them work just fine. Hook right up to the internet without much trouble, except when we turn on the microwave and then nothing works. And if you have Wi-Fi and also have a microwave oven in your kitchen, you may also find that this is a problem. So why? Why does turning on the microwave disconnect and screw up the Wi-Fi? Well, the problem is that both microwave ovens and Wi-Fi operate on the same frequency, 2.4 GHz.

In theory, a properly shielded microwave oven shouldn't leak any radiation, but the reality is that they leak quite a bit of radiation, resulting in electromagnetic interference, and that messes up the Wi-Fi signal. In fact, a lot of things operate at 2.4 gigahertz, so you can get Wi-Fi interference from routers, baby monitors, cordless phones, toaster ovens, electric blankets, ultrasonicahertz band. But if it's just the microwave, the interference will only last when the microwave is on, and you'll probably do what we do and just learn to live with it. And that is something you should know.

Time sure flies when you're having fun. I think we've all had that experience. But why does time fly when you're having fun. I think we've all had that experience. But why does time fly when we're having fun? And why does it seem to slow down when we're not having fun? Why does time seem to go by faster as we get older? We all experience time, but what is it really? Here to discuss all that is Alan Burdick. Alan is a staff writer and former senior editor

at The New Yorker, and he spent 10 years writing the book, Why Time Flies. Hi, Alan. Welcome. Great to be here. Thanks for having me. So after examining and studying time for 10 years to write this book, how do you look at time? What is time to you? I guess the short answer is I started this project with the feeling that time is my enemy, and came out of it feeling like time is my friend. Now, maybe I have to feel that way, because the book took 10 years to write, and in that time, I've got to make friends with time while I still can. But I guess, you know, I came from a place where I really thought of time as this sort of external obstacle that we,

that we kind of collectively put in front of ourselves. And I came out of this, you know, really with a much deeper understanding of biology and psychology and neurobiology, of where our time comes from and how we generate it and how it, in a sense, sort of emanates from us. So it's a lot more organic than I ever thought. Is time a real thing, or is it just something we invented so we can kind of keep track of stuff? It's both. I mean, I guess I kind of came to think of time

as almost like a language, in the sense that, yes, time is something that our mind generates. It's something that our bodies generate. I mean, our cells basically have 24-hour clocks in them that are pretty rigidly set by the kind of genetic mechanisms inside the nucleus. So the passing of time is a very real thing that we experience,

but it's absolutely necessary. You can't put your finger on it any more than you can really put your finger on the spoken word, but it's absolutely essential to societal organization, our personal organization. How does science look at time? Does science have a pretty good handle on what time is for their purposes? You know, what time is really depends on what sort of scientists you talk to. There are scientists who try to understand how infants understand time, and, you know, scientists who try to understand how infants understand time and scientists who try to understand how our neurons process time. of under one rug. You know, there's our experience of duration, how long an event seemed to last, like why is that stoplight taking too long? And there's our understanding of, you know, one thing coming after another or before another, what we call temporal sequence. There's your kind of ongoing sense that it's now, right now, and that, you know, the future is in one direction and the past

is in another direction. Those are all fairly distinct experiences that come online in our lives at different times. And, you know, we kind of lump them together, but they're quite distinct. Is there a good sense or a good explanation of why people have that universal experience that time goes by faster when you're having a good time, time goes a lot slower when and maybe less exciting than one might think. The fact is that the more you think about time or what time it is, the slower time seems to go. So, you know, the expression time flies when you're having fun is true because when you're having fun, your attention is focused on what you're doing. You're at a movie or you're out with friends or whatever. You're really not paying attention to the time at all.

And then when two hours or three hours or whatever has gone by, you come to the end and you're like, wow, I just noticed the time again. And a lot of time had gone by. Whereas if you're at a super dull party, or you're in a dentist chair, and you're spending that whole time thinking, I want this time to end, when does the next event begin? Your memories of that span of time are really flooded with you thinking about the time. A watch pot never boils. Correct. Because the more we think about time, the slower it goes.

But it does seem to be a fairly universal experience that time goes faster as we get older. Is that true? I mean, do surveys bear that out? It is. And it's really tricky because, in a sense, surveys do bear it out, so much so that it's not clear that it actually, that that phrase, time speeds up as we get older, actually means what we think it does. So, you know, historically, the way that this was studied, you know, the idea has been around for a long time. 50, 60 years ago, scientists started to kind of explore it in depth. And they would do these surveys where they would ask people, you know, how much faster would you say time goes for you now than it did 10 years ago or 20 years ago? And people would give some number like, oh, it's twice as fast or three times as fast. And, you know, like 80, 90% of people said on the whole, the time goes faster now than it used to. But, you know, keep in mind that the

question they were being asked was pretty much a leading question. You know, it sort of assumed that it was, you know, the answer that you got was not really helpful because, you know, if I ask you how much better does your lunch taste today than it did 20 years ago, you have no idea what you ate for lunch 20 years ago, much less how you felt about how quickly time passed. So it was kind of a meaningless question in all of those surveys. And now, the way they study this question is more like, you know, if I ask you, okay, on a scale of minus two, minus two being very slow, to plus two, plus two being very fast, how, at what speed would you say the past month has gone by? So answer that question for me. How, on a scale of minus two to plus two, how fast has the

last month gone by? Pretty fast. I'd say it went by, it's close to plus two. Close to plus two. And how about like the last year? Same. Yeah. The same. Just, I mean, okay, yesterday. Yesterday, my wife and I were talking and we said, you know, I think the cleaning lady

who comes every two weeks is coming today. And she said, no, I think she was here last week. And she hadn't been here in two weeks, but time has gone by so fast that we thought two weeks was one week. It, to me, seems like time is just zooming by. You're actually an exception. Most people say one. It's going fast.

And they say one regardless of the span of time. So a year, a month, a week, a day, ten years goes by fast. And they say one, regardless of the span of time. So a year, a month, a week, a day, 10 years goes by fast for pretty much everybody and for pretty much everybody at all ages. I mean, if time really were speeding up as we get older, you would think that older people, more older people would say, you know, one or two than younger people. But in fact, everybody at all ages, reflecting on all spans of time, says that time goes by fast, one. Isn't that interesting, that everybody perceives time as going by fast, but time just goes by. I mean, time, there's nothing more constant than the speed of time. It goes by as it goes by. It always has, and it, I guess, likely will.

But our perception is that it's going, everybody's perception is that it's going by fast. Faster than what? Right. Alan Burdick is my guest. He is a staff writer and former senior editor at The New Yorker. And the name of his book is Why Time Flies. So I just got my first box from ButcherBox. And if you haven't heard of ButcherBox, you really need to.

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And finally, wrap up your week with Fisting Friday, where we catch up and talk all things pop culture. Listen to Don't Blame Me, But Am I Wrong on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday. So, Alan, since everybody has that perception at any age that time is going by faster, then is there any way to have the perception, to force the perception, that slows it down? Well, you know, what the science shows is essentially that we feel the most like time is speeding up when we are busy or preoccupied.

That is, not thinking about time. Time flies when you're having fun, right? When you're having fun, you're not thinking about time. So it's only afterward when the fun is over that you realize that time flew. So time, you're never aware of time flying while you are in it. So really the best that you can do if you want time to slow down is to try to ignore it and dive into what is right in front of you and not think about time at all. And then if you're lucky, when you're done, you can look back and say, wow, time really flew by. Because most of the time when you're sitting around thinking time is going really slowly, it's because you're really desperate for whatever situation you are in to end and, you know, and looking at the clock. But that's sort of

antithetical to the kind of slowing down experience that I think you're describing. Well, that's interesting what you just said, that our perception that time flies is always a perception, a judgment that we make about the past. We never have the perception that right now is flying by. It's always last week flew by. Exactly.

But right now, time's just time. I can look at the clock and I see the seconds and they're going at the same rate that they've always gone. They never speed up. They never do. I remember this just popped into my head, and so I don't even know that you looked into this,

but I remember somebody telling me in a discussion about how other animals perceive time. For example, one of the reasons it's so hard to swat a fly is that the fly's perception of time is different. He sees us coming at him basically in slow motion, even though we think we're going very fast. So he leaps and bounds ahead of you because of the way the fly perceives time, and his lifetime is only days or a, days or a couple of weeks or

something. So did you look at that at all? How other animals perceive time? A little bit. I mean, it's a little bit, you know, deceiving, like when we think about tortoises or flies or, you know, creatures with kind of different lifespans than ours and different movement rates. And we sort of imagine them like peeping out of their eye holes the way we peep out of our eye holes and things moving at a different rate than it moves for us. But I'm not sure that that's a helpful way to put yourself in the mind of the animal because, you know, for us, time has this whole other layer. You know, psychologists would say that your sense of self, of who you are, is really rooted in your ability to understand

that the person that you were yesterday and the memories that you had about yesterday will belong to you next week and next year, right? Your sense of self is the understanding that your self will remain the same through time, right? Animals just don't have that. I mean, time has this element of consciousness for us that it really doesn't have for animals. So, I mean, it is true that mosquitoes move a lot faster than we do, but I just don't think thinking about it in terms of time is useful, because it sort of deceives us into thinking that we can place ourselves in the minds of insects somehow, or turtles, in a way that they just don't really have the same experience as we do.

You know, I've always thought that, well, you know, when a fly is at the end of his two-week life, is he like feeling, God, I'm just so done. I'm just so tired. Because that seems so odd to me that, you know, it's just been two weeks. It's, you know, you hardly got started and now you're done. It's a pretty slippery topic, this whole thing about time, because it's so hard to... You can't really touch it. You can't see. It's there, and you know it's there, but it's not anything you can kind of put your arms around and say, oh, this is time, and now I get it.

I mean, in a way, that's sort of what drew me to this subject in the first place, because it is, you know, it's really all pervasive and yet so non-tangible that I wanted to find a way to really kind of talk about it in a way that the reader could touch almost. I sort of made a point in the book of really focusing on experiments and studies that have been done over time, because it's sort of the one way that scientists have been able to start to wrap their, you know, wrap their fingers around what this stuff we call time is. Can you just mention, like, two of your favorite little studies that you found that help explain that? Oh, I spent some really fascinating time in the lab of a developmental psychologist, a guy who works with infants, and began to try to kind of understand how these,

you know, these are babies, basically, you know, looking at monitors in which, you know, they're like talking lips, you know. Basically, he was trying to understand, like, these lips on the screen make noises of voice coming out of them. And somehow the babies were really good at connecting the sight of the lips moving with the sound that was coming out of them, even if the sound that was coming out of them was like in Spanish or in another language that the baby didn't know. So how could the baby basically synchronize an audio sequence and a video sequence without actually understanding what the content of that stuff was?

It's like when we watch, you know, you're watching TV sometimes and the cable, there's suddenly this lag and you're like, oh my God, the lips and the voice don't match up anymore. If that lag gets longer than about 80 milliseconds,

it drives adults crazy. But it turns out that babies can withstand like two thirds of a second of lag between audio and video before they notice that anything's wrong. It's like they have a much more expansive sense of what now is than we do, much more forgiving. Well, it is so interesting that, you know, the old saying, all we have is time. And even though that's all we do have, it's really hard to get your head around it and understand what it is and how it works. But no one's done a better job of trying than you have.

My guest has been Alan Burdick. He is a staff writer and former senior editor at The New Yorker. His book is called Why Time Flies. And there's a link to his book at Amazon in the show notes. Thanks, Alan. Thank you. Thanks so much for having me. This is that time of year when you start thinking about summer vacation. And I'd like you to start thinking about Portland, Oregon, because there's so much to do in Portland, particularly in the summer.

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So why do some groups excel and others don't? What makes a high-performing group different than a low-performing group? And how can any group perform better? Daniel Coyle has taken a long, hard look at this. He has studied several groups for his new book, The Culture Code, The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups, including U.S. Navy's Teal Seam Six, Zappos, the San Antonio Spurs, and many others. He is currently working with the Cleveland Indians on talent and performance development. Hi, Daniel. Welcome to Something You Should Know. Hey, it's good to be here, Mike. Thanks for having me. So talk about your journey into this subject, because it's an interesting story.

I've been writing about high performance for quite a long time now. I did a book called The Talent Code, which was focused on individuals. How do individuals get really great? What happens in their brains? What do they do in their practice areas? How do they get motivated? The reporting for that took me on this journey around the world where I kept bumping into these really amazing groups. And you'd walk into their presence, maybe it'd be a tennis club or a chess club or a business, and you could feel something happening there. You could feel a sense of cooperation and connection. And we've all felt that in our lives. And it's sort of the most valuable feeling

in the world. In fact, when you sort of add up what that feeling is worth in performance, it's massive. And so the book ended up being an exploration of the mystery. What's that made of? And how can we control it? So what's that made of? And how can we control it? What good question that is. Thank you. Thank you. Well, traditionally, we've always thought about culture as being the soft stuff, right? It's individual to each group, and it's sort of like personality. It's very mysterious. Well, in fact, there has been a truckload of science in recent years to pull that sort of curtain back and show what's really going on is an exchange of signals. Whether you are a group of Navy SEALs or a classroom or a business or a family, there's a

fundamental kind of this elemental language, a language not of words but of signals. And these are signals of three things. Signals of safety, We're connected. We share a future. Signals of vulnerability. Like we share information here. We tell each other the truth. And signals of direction. So when you feel that feeling of being in a great group, it's actually what you're receiving is a set of signals to saying that we're connected. We're going to tell each other the truth and we're going to go here and not here. And that language, you know, we've sort of traditionally thought culture is just something some groups have, right? But when you dig into it, a new truth has emerged, which is, hey, it's not something you have, it's something you do. And there's, it's learnable,

it's controllable. Culture isn't some sort of lucky thing that happens to some groups and is their destiny. In fact, you can control it. So that's an interesting and insightful observation that that's how groups function and how groups work. But what's the big payoff to that? What do we do with that information that's valuable? You know, I spent time visiting the top performing groups in the world. And it was Pixar and Navy SEAL Team 6 and San Antonio Spurs and IDEO and embedding myself with them. And I came back from that sort of change. Like there were things that I, you could sort of steal. And one of them is, I call it the two line email. It's a really simple technique that's done by a guy at Google named Laszlo Bock, studies people analytics there. And it's a real simple email that you send to people you work with that says, hey, tell me one

thing that you want me to keep doing and one thing you want me to stop doing. That's it. It's a really simple signal, but it sends the signal of connection and safety and it creates conversation. And in a way, in a nutshell, that's exactly what all of this is about. It's about learning to deliver with your behavior really clear signals. Culture is a clarity contest. Another thing that I've done actually around the kitchen table, it's funny, you know, I've got four kids and, you know, the nightmare conversation is always around the kitchen table, like, what'd you do today? How was your day? You know, that never ever goes well. But in fact, when you send a signal of vulnerability,

it creates more connection, more cooperation, and definitely more conversation. So instead of asking your kids how to go today, you start by telling a story of something you screwed up at today, just a simple failure, and throw it out there and see what happens. And what happens is you create what are called vulnerability loops, which are exchanges of honesty and vulnerability that create closeness in groups. And the benefit of all of this is what? Performance. Culture is a Harvard study that looked at 200 companies.

And it could have been companies, it could have been groups. Culture makes groups add up to more than the sum of their parts. Culture is the greatest asset groups have. And that 10-year study, by the way, showed that culture, groups with a strong culture as opposed to groups with an average culture, with identical companies, produced 756% more net revenue over 10 years. And you see that in sports. You see teams with good culture are able to perform. So ultimately, it's all about adding up to more than the sum of our parts. There are groups, you walk into them, and they're less than the sum of their

parts. But by learning the simple language of connection, language of shared vulnerability, language of direction, what are we about, where are we headed, you can help your group add up to more than the sum of its parts. Well, doesn't a group, in order to excel and perform, have to be made up of competent individuals who work well together? Exactly, exactly. That's the bottom line. You have to have that level of skill. But today's world, it's like, you know, the world moves a lot faster than it used to. It used to be you could sort of get a job and get good at one thing and then trust that that skill would sort of keep you and keep you

safe in that organization. The world has turned into a learning contest. The world is a giant school and we're all in it. And so that signal, the signals that a culture sends to say, hey, we're trying to create growth. In order to do that, you need to create a strong culture. You need to create a culture that can learn together, that can be agile and where you can have skilled people distributed throughout the group, solving problems together. Like that old top-down authoritative model. it works for simple problems, but the world isn't simple anymore. So culture is more important than ever because that's the way our skills get multiplied. It's like you can be skilled and I can be skilled, but if we don't have good conversations, if we don't actually connect

and tell each other the truth about what's going on, we're not going to combine in anything. So it's way, that's why culture is a multiplier. It's way more important than skill. As we've talked here, you use or seem to use the word culture and group interchangeably. And I don't think of those terms as interchangeable. They have very different meanings for you, but for me, but so why are they interchangeable? You know, a culture, the root word of culture is Latin, cultus, which means care. And a culture, what a culture really is, it is a linked group of relationships moving toward a goal. It's a group of living relationships moving toward a goal. That's a pretty good definition of a cohesive group. It's a pretty good definition of a culture. But it's all about that space between people. That's what culture is made up of. If you can have a real conversation with people where you're connected and safe and moving toward a goal together, that's what culture is. So culture, great groups and great culture, you could use those interchangeably.

So what separates those great groups? You talk about sports, and the difference between the number one team and the number two team may not be such a huge difference, but what, what, what is it that makes those number one teams number one? Yeah, it was funny when I was walking around, I visited Navy SEAL team six, I visited Pixar and, and all these places I had the exact same experience, which was a leader would be really, really open with me. I'm walking through Pixar and the head of Pixar, Ed Catmull, turns to me. I said, I was walking through this incredible building. It was this sort of semi-new building. And I said,

this is the coolest building I've ever seen, Ed, because it had all these amazing features. And he said, actually, this building was a huge mistake. Really? And then he goes on to detail all the mistakes that were in the building. The hallways were too narrow. The atrium was wrong. But the biggest mistake was that they didn't see these mistakes while they were building the building. Incredible openness and vulnerability. And then I met the Navy SEAL Team 6 commander, Dave Cooper, who trained the troops for the bin Laden raid. And he said this, he said, the most important four words a leader can say are, I screwed that up. And the reason that both these great leaders are doing the exact same thing is that sending a signal of vulnerability creates connection. It allows people in their group to have that conversation.

When you compliment most leaders on their building, that really is a nice building, they say thank you and they mean it. But that's not what happens in these groups. They're constantly trying to create a conversation around, hey, what's really happening here? What's the truth? And how can we build a shared mental model and solve problems together? Well, understanding that that's the goal, how can we build a shared mental model and solve problems? I get that. But it doesn't tell me how to do it. It just makes me want to do it. So on a day-to-day, get-it-done sort of way, what is it that these groups do differently? How do they come together differently that helps them excel? Yeah, good question. Well, the first thing, you have to think about it in kind of this evolutionary way, right? Our brains have been built by evolution to use shortcuts to determine

whether or not we are going to form a group with people, and we're social animals. And whether we're in or we're out of that group is the first big thing. There's a section of our brain called the amygdala, which is down at the center. And it's constantly testing the environment and looking at the environment for signals of lack of safety. So the first thing great groups do, step one, is make that connection really intently and really strongly. When you start at one of these places, you know it because they make that first day massively important. When you're at Pixar, you walk in and Ed Catmull goes up in front of you and he says, whatever you did before, you're a movie maker now. We need you to make our films better. And then you go off to a meeting where everybody has an opportunity

to weigh in on the footage and give advice and give suggestions on the footage that they created the day before. They're constantly sending this signal to the amygdala of you are connected. We share a future. It's called a belonging queue. So that's step one. Step two is you start opening up and creating vulnerability loops. You start doing what Ed Catmull and Dave Cooper did by saying, hey, I know that I could act all authoritative and have it over you and sort of tell you what to do. But what I'm going to do is I'm going to open up and I'm going to tell you the truth about what's going on. I'm going to expose some weakness and that moment of exposing weakness. And that creates a spiral in a group. When you're constantly creating safety, then you can be more vulnerable,

which creates more safety, which creates more vulnerability. So conceptually, what you've got is a spiral. And you're alert for moments where that safety gets broken. You're alert for moments where that vulnerability gets strengthened. And you build habits, almost like cultural calisthenics. Each of these groups would do things at the SEALs, they're called an AAR, after action review, that are where they literally circle up and have these vulnerability loops, these intense moments where they address their weakness. So you're constantly sort of bonding with these belonging cues, and then you're putting the vulnerability loops. So that's steps one and two. Step three, you got to go somewhere, right? You got to have a way. And the way that our brains are built to determine where we're going in groups is through story. It's through story.

So you get a group together and you've established your safety and vulnerability and your connection and your sharing. But now you've got to put something in the windshield. You've got to say, what are we about? Where are we going? What shared destination, what shared benefit are we going toward? And with these groups, you constantly see they sort of fill the windshield with these vivid emotional GPS signals, a story and metaphor that allows them to solve problems together and move in the same direction. You can almost picture for all of this, if you picture, you ever see a flock of birds all moving together as one, Mike, or a school of fish, right? That's

what great groups do. That's Pixar making a movie. That's the SEAL Team 6 on a mission. And those three things, we're connected, sending signals of connection. We're sharing accurate information. We're not BSing each other. We're not hiding our weakness. If you hide your weakness, you're going to be weak. If you share it, you're going to be strong. So that moment of sharing information is really what about vulnerability is about. And then they have direction. They have a North Star. What's important? Well, what's important if you're the maker of Tylenol is the users of our product. We protect their safety. If you're the Navy SEALs, it's about what's important.

We shoot, move, and communicate. That's what we do. If you're the San Antonio Spurs, you pound the rock. They've got all these sort of mantras that evoke the direction they want to go together and create a story in the minds of their people. So there's your three-step. I think people don't have to buy the book anymore. Maybe I told them too much. But this sounds, frankly, a little exhaust. Does every group need to be a great group? This sounds like a lot of work and a lot of effort, and maybe our group doesn't need

to be so great. Absolutely, absolutely. There's plenty of room in the world for groups that aren't great. And the key thing though, is that people right now regard culture as magic. Apple's got it. Google's got it, right? That restaurant down the street has it, or that school my kids go to doesn't have it. But when you stop regarding it as magic, when you actually see that it is not, it is, it is a series of signals. It is, that is sent all the time in a group. And you tune in to little moments, to little moments that have big impact. And those moments can be tiny, but they can have a huge impact because they are the moments when groups connect, when they share information and when they decide on direction. So it ends up being, it's been funny to have people read the book. It's been really fun because I've worked on it for a while and have it out in the world.

And I think the main thing that people are taking away is two things it's validating a lot of their instincts about about what works and what doesn't work and it's giving them kind of a conceptual grid to put those in and the second thing is doing is kind of exciting them because some of these things are really small. Like they're really easy to do to sort of, you know, to have an AAR, right? You finish, we all do group projects. We all have family vacations. We all work in a group. But to actually do what the SEALs do and stop afterwards and circle up together and say,

okay, what went right? What went wrong? And what are we going to do differently next time? It's actually more efficient. Like life gets simpler because then you realize, oh, we're actually, we going to do differently next time? It's actually more efficient. Life gets simpler because then you realize, oh, we need to do that. We're sort of like an athlete together. We should pay attention where we make mistakes and where we do well. And it makes life easier.

Well, I think everyone has had the experience of working in a group, whether it's at home or some organization. And sometimes the group works well together, the team performs, and other times it doesn't, and now we know why. Daniel Coyle has been my guest. His book is The Culture Code, The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups. There's a link to his book at Amazon in the show notes. And thanks for being here, Daniel. You're welcome, Mike.

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