There’s a phrase in the business world that says, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast,” meaning, no matter how much an organization plans, no matter how strong its strategy is, the culture of a company will override any strategy. You can tell people what to do until you’re blue in the face, but at the end of the day, if they haven’t bought into their work and feel a sense of excitement and contribution, your company’s strategy is at risk.
It’s not that people are slacking off or unmotivated to work, but if you want your company to stay relevant and scale or expand in any way, your employees need to be excited about work and have psychological safety, or the belief they won’t be punished or humiliated when speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes. Without that safety, your company won’t thrive. Instead, your company will only include the voices of some and become homogeneous. However, it’s also important to note that without strategy, your company won’t have anywhere to land its ideas.
The Harvard Business School found 90% of businesses fail to meet their strategic targets and that’s likely because the vast majority (85%) of executive leadership teams spend less than an hour per month discussing strategy. Half of leadership teams spend zero time discussing strategy, according to the Harvard Business Review.
You need a strategy because it helps you prioritize and track work, allocate resources, provide direction, and create benchmarks for your goals. (Speaking of goals, I recommend the regular use of a retrospective for assessing whether you’ve met them or not.)
Throughout this pandemic, businesses and individuals alike are pivoting — some better than others. A strategic plan means you can be proactive and not reactive. Instead of constantly pivoting, you’re planning ahead. You can anticipate what your company will do in XYZ situation, learn from it, and do better next time if that situation arises. For instance, what happens if there’s another pandemic? Or supply chain shortage? Or a fire in your office building? This is why there are fire drills — to anticipate and prepare for that situation. Are you anticipating and preparing for metaphorical and literal fires?
I propose that culture and strategy partner together to form a healthy relationship because they each have something to offer and share with the other. If I were to personify culture, I would say it’s the creative, open, sexy, interesting person that’s also chaotic and scattered. You never know what’s going to happen with culture, what culture will say. Culture is exciting, but also tends to create drama. Culture is that person who shows up at your door at 3 a.m. unannounced and says, “Hi, I need a place to stay.”
And on whose door does culture knock? Strategy. Strategy is the straightlaced, conservative, punctual, reliable person who is perhaps inflexible and overly scheduled. They are the person who always has hand sanitizer and tissues on them “just in case.” Of course culture would knock on strategy’s door at 3 a.m. because strategy always has a plan, not to mention a couch.
But what happens when these two join forces? Culture becomes less scattered and strategy becomes more flexible. Combined, your company becomes more successful when you utilize the intelligence of culture with the direction and purpose of strategy.
LUMAN is a human training and strategy development firm. We tap into the intelligence of culture by looking at the behaviors and mindsets held at your company. We teach your people how to actively create the future while getting work done. This means assessing your culture, collaborating with you to determine what’s getting in the way, all while leading your people to deliver your awesome strategy. What will it take and who does your team need to be to meet the strategic goals? What behaviors aren’t working? What beliefs are getting in the way? All this must be taken into account.
One way to merge strategy with culture is to co-create a cultural playbook that details the values of your organization, identifies your unique behaviors and mindsets, and aligns your people with purpose. Culture is just there, it’s inevitable when you’re involving humans, but it doesn’t have to be the chaotic, haphazard entity it sometimes is. It could be effective, functional, and supportive, helping your business meet its goals while having great working relationships along the way. That’s why I say culture should meet strategy for breakfast. If they did, just imagine what would be possible.
