This chapter discusses the sources of success for high-performing groups. It explores how a group's culture, including its stories, language, rituals and informal roles, can foster cohesion and boost creativity. Play, spirit and finding a group's soul are identified as core to extraordinary results, rather than just structure or personnel. In conclusion, team building at its core is a spiritual process where discovering a shared identity and purpose through cultural means can lead to peak performance.

1. Reframing Organizations, 4th ed.

2. Chapter 13
Organizational Culture in Action

3. Organizational Culture in Action
 The Eagle Group’s Sources of Success
 Leading Principles

4. The Eagle Group’s Sources of
Success
 Why do some groups produce extraordinary
results while others produce little or nothing?
 Play, spirit and culture are at the core of peak
performance

5. Sources of cultural success I
 How someone becomes a group member is
important
 Diversity provides a team’s competitive
advantage
 Examples, not command, holds a team
together
 A specialized language fosters cohesion and
commitment

6. Sources of cultural success (II)
 Stories carry history and values and reinforce
group identity
 Humor and play reduce tension and
encourage creativity
 Ritual and ceremony lift spirits and reinforce
values

7. Sources of cultural success (III)
 Informal cultural players make contributions
disproportionate to their formal roles
 Soul is the secret of success

8. Conclusion
 Symbolic perspectives questions traditional
views on team building
 Right structure and people are important, but
not sufficient
 The essence of high performance is spirit
 Banishing play, ceremony and myth would
destroy teamwork, not create it
 Team building at its heart is a spiritual
undertaking: peak performance emerges as a
team discovers its soul