Flow is the state of complete absorption in which people do their finest work—the runner in stride, the team that moves as one mind. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi first named it in individuals. A Culture of Flow shows that it belongs to teams as well, and that shared flow is the deepest source of an organization’s performance, creativity, and endurance. We have learned to see organizations one person at a time, trusting that a strong team is the sum of strong people. Yet a team has a collective life that its members do not have on their own, and that life stays mostly invisible, even as it determines whether an organization thrives. Michael Crooke and Damian Vaughn bring that whole into view, treating a team—and the organization it belongs to—as a living system. Drawing together systems science, psychology, strategy, and organizational development, they show how a group moves, where its energy gathers and where it drains. At the center are three forces—momentum, differentiation, and integration—whose power lies in how they reinforce one another. Through case studies, applied tools, and original models, A Culture of Flow offers leaders a new way to see and shape organizational life.
