1: Pixar is the animation studio behind some of the most beloved movies of recent times, including Toy Story, The Incredibles, Finding Nemo, and Monsters Inc., to name but a few.
One of the secrets behind the studio’s unprecedented string of successes is something called the BrainTrust.
According to Pixar co-founder and former president Ed Catmull, “The BrainTrust is the most important thing we do by far,” … continue reading
1: It was March of 2011. SEAL Team Six Commander Master Chief Dave Cooper and another Team Six leader were summoned to CIA headquarters in McLean, Virginia.
“We think we’ve found Osama bin Laden,” Admiral William McRaven, commander of Joint Special Operations Command, told them bluntly.
Admiral McRaven then outlined the plan: “Team Six operators would fly into Pakistan in stealth helicopters, fast-rope onto the the compound’s roof, … continue reading
Question: What is the best way to find ten large red balloons deployed at secret locations throughout the United States?
“This is not an easy question,” Daniel Coyle writes in The Culture Code.
“It was dreamed up by scientists from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), a division of the U.S. Department of Defense tasked with helping America’s military prepare for future technological challenges.”
DARPA announced the Red … continue reading
1: We are sitting at a table across from a complete stranger.
Each of us is given four tokens.
Each token is worth one dollar if we keep it. But it’s worth two dollars if we give it to the other person.
This game consists of a single decision: How many tokens do we give the other person?
As it turns out, this is a complex decision. If we give … continue reading
1: “I got it.”
These were the first words uttered by Captain Al Haynes after the explosion went off in the back of the airplane. He grabbed the control wheel, known as the yoke.
Later, Al would call these three words “the dumbest thing I’ve ever said in my life,” Daniel Coyle writes in The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups.
Yesterday, we looked at the … continue reading
1: The date was July 10, 1989. United Airlines flight 232 took off from Denver headed for Chicago.
There were 285 passengers on board.
It was a gorgeous day, sunny and mild. There were light winds out of the west at thirteen miles per hour.
“For the first hour and ten minutes of the trip, everything went perfectly. Over Iowa, the crew, consisting of Captain Al Haynes, first officer … continue reading
1: That they are happy, lighthearted places.
Highly successful workplace cultures “are energized and engaged, but at their core their members are oriented less around achieving happiness than around solving hard problems together,” Daniel Coyle writes in The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups.
High-performing teams embrace “many moments of high-candor feedback” and “uncomfortable truth-telling,” Daniel writes.
Exhibit one: The San Antonio Spurs and their Head Coach … continue reading
1: The team of researchers from Stanford, Yale, and Columbia discovered something surprising.
They ran an experiment with middle school students who were instructed to write an essay. Afterward, teachers provided different types of feedback to improve their work, Daniel Coyle writes in The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups.
There was “one particular form of feedback boosted student effort and performance so immensely that they deemed … continue reading
1: The San Antonio Spurs are the most successful team in American sports in the past 25 years, Daniel Coyle writes in The Culture Code.
They’ve won “five championships and a higher percentage of games than the New England Patriots, the St. Louis Cardinals, or any other storied franchise,” he notes.
When asked what was the greatest moment of team cohesion, Spurs players and coaches all agree on one … continue reading
1: That was all writer Neil Paine could think of to say.
Neil’s a numbers guy. He had formulated an algorithm to determine who was the best NBA coach ever, analyzing “player performance metrics to predict how many games a team should win,” Daniel Coyle writes in The Culture Code.
“The vast majority of NBA coaches win roughly the number of games they should win, given their players’ abilities,” … continue reading
