Cover of A Culture of Flow by Michael Crooke and Damian Vaughn
Columbia Business School Publishing · January 5, 2027

The team that moves as one mind.

“You reach a state as a team when the initial goals, status and ego melt away, and the shared striving for something beautiful becomes its own reward.”

Most of how we develop teams rests on two quiet biases, individualism and reductionism. We build the team one person at a time, and in doing so lose sight of the team itself. A team has its own field. When it comes alive, a we emerges that none of its members holds alone. Flow has been examined almost entirely as an individual experience. This book brings a systems view to flow - three forces, momentum, differentiation and integration - and with it a new way to see, and to develop, the teams we belong to.

Michael Crooke and Damian Vaughn

From two students of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

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Brené BrownPhD, author of Strong Ground and Dare to Lead“As someone who has studied teams and worked with leaders for over two decades, I can tell you that this book is an absolute unlock! I can’t stop thinking about the research and the tools. Team flow is more than a collection of individuals in flow. Fitting in is not belonging. Crooke and Vaughn just handed us the playbook for building teams whose members love their work, energize one another, and create a contagious, self-reinforcing momentum. Let’s go!”
Adam Grant#1 New York Times bestselling author of Vibe and Think Again, and host of the TED podcast Re:Thinking“Finally: a book that demystifies how to find flow together. There’s nothing more rewarding, creative, or productive than being immersed in a team on a meaningful mission, and Michael Crooke and Damian Vaughn draw on a rich base of experience and evidence to unpack it. A Culture of Flow is a timely, actionable guide to getting groups in sync.”

The making of the book

The teams in the book: Patagonia - Fox International Channels - WAYB - BetterUp - two NFL locker rooms

The three forces · 3:02

See what the book teaches.

Cover of A Culture of Flow by Michael Crooke and Damian Vaughn
Columbia Business School Publishing · January 5, 2027

A Culture of Flow

The Three Forces That Drive Purpose and Performance
Pre-order wherever you buy booksAbout the book
Between you

Bring one relationship to mind.

The people you build with, live with, play with. Whoever came to you first.

Praise

What people are saying about the book

“As someone who has studied teams and worked with leaders for over two decades, I can tell you that this book is an absolute unlock! I can’t stop thinking about the research and the tools. Team flow is more than a collection of individuals in flow. Fitting in is not belonging. Crooke and Vaughn just handed us the playbook for building teams whose members love their work, energize one another, and create a contagious, self-reinforcing momentum. Let’s go!”
Brené BrownPhD, author of Strong Ground and Dare to Lead
“Finally: a book that demystifies how to find flow together. There’s nothing more rewarding, creative, or productive than being immersed in a team on a meaningful mission, and Michael Crooke and Damian Vaughn draw on a rich base of experience and evidence to unpack it. A Culture of Flow is a timely, actionable guide to getting groups in sync.”
Adam Grant#1 New York Times bestselling author of Vibe and Think Again, and host of the TED podcast Re:Thinking
“I’ve spent my career helping individual leaders change. A Culture of Flow goes where that work alone can’t reach, to the team as a living system. Crooke and Vaughn make the collective visible and give leaders something to do about it. Important and overdue.”
Marshall Goldsmith, author of What Got You Here Won’t Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful
“In Flow and Good Business, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi described the dynamics of flow, good work, and engaged lives. Here, two accomplished former students build on his work, drawing on insights rooted in their rich experiences leading companies like Patagonia to present a vision of how work teams can find shared flow.”
Jeanne Nakamura, coauthor of Good Mentoring and director of the Quality of Life Research Center, Claremont Graduate University
“Our society glorifies the individual - we always need to find the hero. But it’s teams that win. Crooke and Vaughn take this principle seriously and develop a transformational framework for getting teams to work better - written by two people who have lived it many times over.”
Bruce Blonigen, Edward Maletis Dean, Lundquist College of Business, University of Oregon
“The winners aren't the companies with the best idea - they're the ones whose teams love the work itself. A Culture of Flow is the playbook for building those teams, from two authors who learned it from the master of flow himself.”
Steve Case, cofounder of AOL, chairman and CEO of Revolution LLC, and author of the New York Times best-seller The Third Wave
“Every coach has felt a team take off and had no real idea how to make it happen again. This book explains it. Read it for what they do with momentum, which is the thing we chase all season and rarely understand.”
Sean Payton, head coach of the Denver Broncos and Super Bowl XLIV champion
“A Culture of Flow offers a compelling and practical framework for building exceptional teams. By showing how differentiation, integration, and momentum work together, the authors explain how to build cultures rooted in trust, shared purpose, adaptability, and continuous growth. Insightful, research-driven, and highly actionable, this is an important read for anyone who wants to unlock an organization’s full potential.”
Keith Richards, Navy SEAL and rear admiral (retired), United States Navy
“What holds a company together across generations isn’t strategy - it’s people and the culture of the team they build together. This book explains how the best teams connect and how leaders can build on it for a common purpose.”
Mark T. Smucker, chief executive officer, president, and chair of the board, The J. M. Smucker Company
“Work has become more interdependent than ever, and individual capability is no longer the primary constraint. Advantage will come from how effectively people create momentum together. Crooke and Vaughn offer leaders a compelling lens to understand and unlock that collective potential. A timely book for anyone leading organizations through the complexity and change of this new era.”
Ravi Kumar, chief executive officer, Cognizant
“A team in flow reaches what no individual on it could reach alone. Most books miss this, chasing individual greatness instead. Crooke and Vaughn map the path: how shared purpose pulls a group into flow together - and raises every member's ceiling in the process.”
Blake Thompson, CEO, Nancy's Probiotic Foods
The making of the book

It begins, and returns, with him.

Claremont · 2010

“Csikszentmihalyi told Michael he wanted to introduce him to someone. It was the only time he would ever go out of his way to do so.”

A planned ten-minute phone call turned into a conversation that ran for hours. It was the beginning of a friendship, and of a partnership.

Thailand · June 2014
Michael Crooke and Damian Vaughn in Thailand, June 2014

We began working together at Fox, at a time when the television industry was being remade. That work brought us to Thailand, to the front of a room with the leadership team of Fox International Channels in Asia. Talented people, spread across countries and businesses that rarely worked as one. For a few days we did flow work together, and something shifted between them.

On that trip, we saw what it all added up to - the research, our own years inside teams, and now our work beside teams like this one. Together it was something new, and it was worth sharing. We asked each other how we could give it to others, so more teams could feel what that room had just felt.

Claremont · October 2019
Michael Crooke, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Isabella Csikszentmihalyi and Damian Vaughn at a table in Claremont

We brought it back to him. Sitting with Mihaly and Isabella, we shared the three forces and where we were taking his work - beyond the individual experience, and into the space between people. He was encouraging of the approach and the view behind it, and he probed and challenged us on it. He passed away not long after.

January 5, 2027

This book carries the work he set in motion into the place where most of us spend our lives: the team.

A note from us

Flow was first examined as an individual experience. We followed it into the space between people.

What calls us is this. Most of what we have built to fix work speaks to one person at a time - the coaching, the wellness programs, the self-help shelf. Meanwhile trust is thinning and teams are pulling apart. When the New York Times named flow as the antidote to languishing, it described flow as something an individual has. No one had written how a whole team, a whole company, gets there together. And as machines take on more of the thinking, the part of work that stays human is the part that happens between people. Flow is a fundamental part of human experience, described in some of the oldest writing we have, from the Axial Age forward. Finding it together, as a team, has never mattered more.

We study flow in others. We develop it in others. And we have lived it ourselves, inside elite teams, from the Navy SEALs to the NFL to some of the world's most renowned brands. We have been on the teams themselves, not only as researchers or coaches on the sideline. It is our honor and our privilege to carry Mihaly's work forward, into the collective, with this book.

Michael and Damian

The authors

Two people, one question.

Michael Crooke

Michael Crooke

Michael Crooke is the Avamere professor of practice, Emeritus, at University of Oregon’s Lundquist College of Business and a consultant for enterprises that embrace the philosophy of “Good Business”. He earned a Ph.D in management from Claremont Graduate University, studying with Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, and co-authored the groundbreaking research paper “Leadership in a Complex World: How to Manage The Tragedy of Choice.” with Dr. Csikszentmihalyi and Dr. Robert Bikel.

Crooke has been recognized by Trust Across America as one of the Top 100 Thought Leaders in Trustworthy Business Behavior (2012-13). In April of 2012 the Ford Foundation named Dr. Crooke one of the “10 Innovators Changing Our World,” and profiled him as one of ten cutting-edge innovators who are shaping new sustainable businesses and influencing positive change around the world.

Crooke is a former Navy SEAL and has 25 years experience as a CEO of companies including Patagonia, PrAna, Pearl Izumi and Revolution Living.

More about Michael
Damian Vaughn

Damian Vaughn

Damian Vaughn has spent his life studying flow. He was the first Brazilian to reach the NFL, then followed the question inward, earning his PhD under Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, and now publishes research on flow in performance, development, and creativity.

He leads flow science at BetterUp, the world’s largest coaching and organizational transformation platform. A three-time founder, he has built and run his own companies, and held senior executive roles at 21st Century Fox and HBO Latin America.

A published musician and a meditation teacher of twenty years, he has taught strategy at the University of Oregon, spoken at the World Economic Forum, and worked with elite professional athletes for two decades. He was featured in the HBO film State of Play: Happiness and received the NFL’s Crystal Award at Super Bowl XLIX.

His work reaches toward the future of flow science: somatic literacy, collective intelligence, and the role of sound, meditation, and the brain in how human beings grow.

More about Damian
Where we're going

Podcasts, tour and talks

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Bring us to your team
Cover of A Culture of Flow by Michael Crooke and Damian Vaughn
Columbia Business School Publishing · January 5, 2027

A Culture of Flow

The Three Forces That Drive Purpose and Performance

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.

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Cover of A Culture of Flow

Pre-order A Culture of Flow

On sale January 5, 2027. Choose your store.

Columbia University Press Amazon [link to come] Barnes & Noble [link to come] Bookshop.org [link to come] Target [link to come] Bulk orders for teams [Porchlight, to come]

ISBN 9780231216920