Organizational culture as a strategy first got my attention when I heard the phrase “Culture eats strategy for breakfast” in a customer-service workshop as a young leader. The idea resonated with me immediately, and over the years I’ve repeatedly experienced it firsthand. Sometimes in great ways, sometimes like a SH*% show.
Peter Drucker is credited with the quote. Whether he said it or not is debatable, but it aligns with his writing, and the theory holds true today.
Leadership teams can spend months developing a brilliant strategy or creating goals and well-intended action items. They can make impressive presentations about their strategic plans and maybe even post about them. But if their culture doesn’t support the behaviors required to turn it into reality, that plan won’t go far beyond the presentation.
It is the culture of an organization that turns plans into results.
Don’t get me wrong: a solid strategy is critical. Clear priorities, timelines, resource allocation, goals, and measures of success are needed. But counting on a strategy to succeed without doing the cultural work to support it sets teams up for inertia, frustration, confusion, and rework.
Strategy sets direction and defines what success will look like. But strategy doesn’t assure performance; it’s the “what”. People determine performance and results through their “how”. The “how” is molded by the organizational culture.
Culture shapes how leaders and teams work together, make decisions, respond to challenges, accept accountability, and whether or not they follow through. The top-down culture cultivates success or is a barrier to it.
As a corporate leader, and now as executive coach, I’ve seen so many leaders fall prey to the assumption that a beautiful strategic plan equals performance and results. Unfortunately, that’s never true. That thinking falls into the “form over substance” category. (Have I ever mentioned that I’m a very direct communicator?)
What’s true, as Harvard Business Review reported, is 60–90% of strategic plans never achieve their intended outcomes— not because they aren’t good plans, but because the cultures don’t support execution.
Where do we find organizational culture?
An organization’s culture lives and permeates through day-to-day operations. From executive meetings to frontline staff. Catch that? Culture cascades from executives to the front line. Leaders may be intentional in establishing their culture or complicit in letting it develop.
Strong organizational cultures feel good. Results carry the day, but who the team members are as they achieve them matters – a lot.
- Everyone feels connected to the whole and understands how they contribute to top-line results
- Leaders walk the talk – behind closed doors and in town hall meetings
- Feedback flows in real time
- Collaboration is expected and rewarded
- Accountability invokes pride v. being akin to poor performance or punishment
Strong organizational cultures demonstrate that creating culture and strategy are not separate initiatives. Though interdependent, culture leads the way for effective strategy.
So, how do they do it?
Five Tips to Strengthen Organizational Culture
- Clarify expectations at every level. Create a line of sight from every role to the big picture.
- Model accountability from the top. Talk about your values as much as you talk about your metrics.
- Reinforce alignment through systems. Tie rewards, recognition, and promotion to the behaviors that matter most – not just the numbers.
- Make real-time feedback the norm. Use regular, short-cycle conversations to reinforce ownership for behavior and results and identify needs to pivot early.
- Share success stories that reinforce culture. Recognize examples of living your values.
None of these tips are “hard”, but they do require planning, commitment, and accountability from every level of leadership.
The Wrap
Leaders, if you want your strategy to succeed, take an objective look at your organizational culture. Ask yourself:
- “What is our culture actually supporting?”
- “What behaviors are we inadvertently reinforcing?”
Figure out where your gaps are, and work to close them.
Where culture and strategy are aligned, there likely is a clear and pretty plan; but it’s the outstanding results and unified workforce that get all the attention.
Need help establishing an organizational culture that will carry your strategy across the finish line? Reach out today for a free consultation.
