In 2011, Navy SEAL Dave Cooper was informed by his commanding officer that Osama bin Laden was in their sights.
But as his leader presented the plan to capture the terrorist mastermind via flying stealth helicopters into Pakistan, Cooper grew concerned. These helicopters were untested in battle, a situation that often turned disastrous.
To ensure success, Cooper prepared for failure. His team engaged in attack simulations on replicas of bin Laden’s compound that included helicopter crashes. Then, he trusted his team members to create on-the-spot solutions for completing the mission.
After each simulation, the team reflected on everything that had gone wrong in a brutally honest truth-telling session called an After Action Review (AAR).
If this sounds like the antithesis of top-down, authoritarian, military-style leadership, that’s because it is. Cooper, who retired in 2012, considers AARs one of the most valuable tools in the SEAL arsenal.
“As humans, we have an authority bias that’s incredibly strong and unconscious,” Cooper says in the new book, “The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups” (Bantam), out Tuesday, by Daniel Coyle.
“Having one person tell other people what to do is not a reliable way to make good decisions. So how do you create conditions where that doesn’t happen, where you develop a hive mind . . . and never defer to authority?
On May 1, 2011, Cooper’s team entered bin Laden’s compound, and one of the helicopters crashed. But thanks to their preparation, the SEALs “pour[ed] out of the downed helicopter, just as they had in the drills.” Thirty-eight minutes later, bin Laden was dead.
The SEALs are just one major organization rejecting traditional top-down authority in favor of a hive-mind culture according to Coyle, whose book says that creating teams where employees feel safe, and where leaders set the tone by demonstrating vulnerability, are the keys to success in the modern world.
“We’re at a tipping point in history between old-style organizations that run on one person having all the answers and the other sort where the intelligence is in the field,” Coyle tells The Post.
The advantage of a hive-mind culture can be seen as simple math. Encouraging risks and participation from all allows for a greater knowledge base and a stronger chance of someone presenting a non-traditional solution that otherwise might have been missed.
Organizations that can successfully establish this sort of culture are best positioned to change the world.
In 2002, the young, not-yet-monolithic Google was run just this way. Co-founder Larry Page settled company dilemmas by hosting “energetic, no-holds-barred debates about how to build the best strategies, products and ideas.”
At the time, Google was experimenting with an ad platform called AdWords that was intended to match search keywords with ads, but it wasn’t working. A search for a Kawasaki H1B motorcycle, for example, might return ads for “lawyers offering help with your H-1B foreign visa application.”
‘We’re at a tipping point in history between old-style organizations that run on one person having all the answers and the other sort where the intelligence is in the field’
- Daniel Coyle
In May of that year, Page posted several of the mismatched ads on the wall of Google’s kitchen, along with a note reading, “THESE ADS SUCK.”
Jeff Dean, an engineer who worked for the company’s Search division, saw the note. Dean was not working on the AdWords project and had no reason to care. In a traditionally structured company, he most likely wouldn’t have.
But when the note brought back “a hazy memory of a similar problem he’d encountered awhile back,” Dean took a crack at the AdWords problem.
“He did not ask permission or tell anyone; he simply dove in,” Coyle writes.
Dean solved the problem that weekend, “instantly boosting the engine’s accuracy scores by double digits.” AdWords “swiftly came to dominate the pay-per-click market,” seeing profits rise from $6 million to $99 million in one year.
“By 2014,” Coyle writes, “the AdWords engine was producing $160 million per day and advertising was providing 90 percent of Google’s revenues.”
Had Google employed a more traditional corporate structure, where only AdWords employees took on the AdWords problem, Google might not be the powerhouse it is today.
Authoritarian leadership has shown its limits. By calling on the intelligence and creativity of a select few, rather than employing every resource, these companies reduce their pool of ideas — and their potential for success. Organizations that encourage participation and creativity from their entire workforce will be the ones that succeed in an increasingly competitive and complex world.
“Authoritarianism works for simple problems and tasks, but with complex problems and tasks that change all the time, taking a softer approach isn’t just a smart or trendy strategy,” says Coyle. “It’s necessary if you want to create a group mind that is greater than the sum of its parts. There’s no other choice.”