Culture and Strategy Should Eat Breakfast Together

05 Sep Culture and Strategy Should Eat Breakfast Together

Posted in Corporate Culture, Leadership, Strategy by Jennifer Eversole 0 Comments
1 Like

Peter Drucker famously quipped that “Culture eats strategy for breakfast”.  But maybe culture and strategy should just be friends and eat breakfast together.

Culture

All companies have an organizational culture, whether they focus on it or not.   Culture is all about the attitude of the company, it’s beliefs and values.  It influences how people behave.  Companies like Google and Zappos have very intentional cultures.  Zappos even publishes  a “culture book” annually.  In the yearbook of sorts, employees talk about their feelings about the company and what working at Zappos means to them.

 
Culture can’t be faked, because it is defined by how people actually behave.  Insincere statements made by leaders about culture can be spotted from a mile away.  In one of Enron’s annual reports, it listed its core values as communication, respect, integrity, and excellence.  But, clearly, writing a paragraph in an annual report isn’t enough. The values that leaders want for their company must be clearly demonstrated in their attitude and behavior every step of the way.

Strategy

A company’s strategy is their roadmap to achieve the vision.  It is dynamic and changing and must be communicated to employees with every pivot.  Leaders can’t assume that everyone just sort of knows what to do. Strategy must include:

 

  1. Vision:  The vision should tell everyone where the company wants to go.
  2. Objectives:  Key areas in which efforts are focused in order to get to where the company wants to go.
  3. Initiatives:  Specific projects or tasks that employees will work on to support the objectives.  Initiatives align the work that employees do everyday with the important things that drive success.
  4. Internal controls:  Ways to ensure that the initiatives are being carried out.  Internal controls should underpin the objectives, laying a solid foundation for success.
  5. Measures:  Data that lets everyone know the effect that the initiatives are having in moving the company towards the vision.

 

How Culture and Strategy Work Together

Culture and strategy are both critical to sustained success.  A great culture is one where employees are engaged with the  strategy and, more importantly, recognize their contribution towards that strategy. Focusing on culture without strategy won’t take a company where it wants to go because employees won’t know what to do. Focusing on strategy without culture will result in disengaged employees who simply don’t care if the company achieves the vision.

 
Great leaders recognize the importance of balancing culture and strategy. They focus on building a culture where employees know the strategy, which leads to better business results, which in turn results in a better culture.  It’s a never ending cycle.  Everybody wins.

Tags:
,
Jennifer Eversole
Jennifer Eversole
[email protected]
No Comments

Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.