
I had a conversation recently with a fellow consultant in which we discussed that well-known business maxim “culture eats strategy for breakfast”.
The rationale behind this phrase seems to be that if you have an outstanding company culture, you don’t need to have a strategy. Or conversely, you can have the best strategy in the world, but a competitor armed only with a better culture will be more successful than you.
So which side is right? Is culture really more important than strategy for a business?
As with so many things, I think that this expression suffers from encouraging polar thinking. That either one thing or the other is the best. However my experience with dozens of companies through a long career has shown me that both have their place.
As always, neither is best and for success we need to build a combination of both.
Strategy Without Culture
Most business schools or courses will teach you that companies need a strategy. They may even teach you how to write a fairly decent one. What do we mean by a strategy though?
In simple terms, we are talking about a plan for the business. An understanding of the services it provides, the clients it wants to serve, the people it’ll need and actions to find them both. This might also be coupled with some sort of long term vision - a destination which the company hopes to reach in the future.
None of this is wrong or harmful to a business. However, in the absence of a great culture, leaders will be trying to deliver this strategy with a team around them who are passively (or even actively) disengaged. It’ll be seen as “their” or “management’s” idea and one that no one else has any investment in.
This would be a sad state of affairs were it not the actual case in so many established businesses! Plans and strategies galore, but a team who would rather be anywhere else.
Culture Without Strategy
OK let’s look at the opposite state. A company that has built and protected an outstanding culture, but lacks any kind of strategy. Sure you’ll have engaged and empowered staff who are capable of applying their talents to any number of things. But without the focus of a strategy, their efforts could be scattered and directionless. A culturally poorer company with greater focus will have more success in their chosen sector, precisely because they’ve chosen a sector
Can you really put a group of talented and empowered people in a room and expect something amazing to emerge? Maybe, but I’ll be willing to bet that one of their first conversations will be about what they’re going to do and for whom. Essentially right from the off, they’ll start building a strategy!
I’ve found this to be the case in a number of organisations who prioritise culture. They are outstanding places to work and their teams would not want to be anywhere else. However, whether documented or not, they always DO have a strategy of some sort.
So I don’t agree with that tired old maxim in its purest sense. Businesses need both a great culture and a solid strategy. Without one or the other, something fundamental is lacking which will negatively impact that organisation's ability to succeed.
Don’t get me wrong, I much prefer working in and with companies whose culture is outstanding. I’ve been lucky enough to do so many times in my career. Having also worked at the opposite end of the spectrum, I know that these types of companies have advantages that more traditional ones do not.
BUT, if they haven’t already, I would always encourage them to define the basic elements of their strategy. This focuses their unique culture and talents in a way that makes an almost unstoppable combination.
Culture and strategy: Two sides of the same coin, neither of which has anything to do with breakfast. But as the old song says (for a truly effective business) “You can’t have one without the other.”
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