Does culture really eat strategy for breakfast?
Good startups often point to their culture as a driver of their success, but Eaon Pritchard asks whether that culture can be derived without a clear strategy?
Culture, in an organisational sense, is usually interpreted as the collective behaviours, attitudes and beliefs that — when mixed together — create a particular set of norms within said organisation.
Obviously there can be ‘good’ culture and ‘bad’ culture.
And those companies where culture eats strategy for breakfast, it is reported that this clear set of shared values and norms actually shapes the way a company operates and is a fundamental driver of the financial success of the business.
A picture of this kind of strong culture features of passionate, empowered employees, deeply engaged.
These are high performing teams, trusting each other, communicating authentically and powering the business towards financial growth and reaching new heights of innovation.
And it all sounds plausible, especially when the usual suspects are presented as case in point. Zappos, Google, Ben & Jerry’s, Starbucks are among the most frequently mentioned. With the likes of new kids AirBnB and Uber now joining the ranks.
They have dynamic, engaged leaders, organic and vibrant self directed employees, empowered to take risks and fail-fast while truly caring about making a difference in the world. Etc etc.
It certainly seems plausible that culture does, indeed, eat strategy for breakfast. [The quote itself is attributed to Peter Drucker, though there’s no evidence he ever said it — other than the anecdotals of Mark Fields from Ford Motor Company, who attributed it to Drucker in a 2006 speech. Peter Drucker is on record, however, noting that culture is hard to change, therefore it’s sensible to try and work with whatever you’ve got].
So the fashionable idea is that within these kind of environments the sheer force of strong culture wills the organisation to success. Poor old strategy is relegated to a mere administrative function.
My fear is that the ‘breakfast’ quote has been skunk-ified and it’s proponents are somewhat culpable of mistaking story-telling for fact.
This interpretation of ‘breakfast’ is a halo effect. A halo effect being the cognitive bias in which a perception of one quality is contaminated by a more readily available quality.
For example; because Kanye West is a successful pop-rapper he must therefore know something about the advertising business and should be allowed to lecture us from Cannes.
In his book The Halo Effect Phil Rosenzweig describes (among nine distinct business delusions) the delusion of the wrong end of the stick.
The wrong end of the stick being a halo effect that tricks us into getting causes the wrong way round.
Is it that companies with a strong culture perform better?
Or is it companies with clear goals and strategies to achieve those goals are the high performing or growing companies that tend to get a better culture?
To paraphrase Rumelt; companies that are doing the work to uncover the critical factors in a situation and designing a way of coordinating and focusing actions to deal with those factors.
Yes, culture can eat strategy for breakfast but if there’s no strategy on the breakfast table then culture will soon get pretty hungry.
Does this sound conservative to you?
Well, the ‘breakfast’ lobby does appear to be the voice of the new digital business.
Purpose before profit right?
After all, we are now part of the sharing economy, one that ‘could just save the least advantaged from ravages of capitalism’ according to poster child and ‘culture driven’ TPG private equity funded Airbnb. Where presumably culture is eating strategy for breakfast.
I side with Rushkoff on this one.
‘[Silicon Valley start-ups] claiming to be saving the world, when they’re really just the latest generation of desperate yuppies chasing capital and,in turn, reinforcing Wall Street’s monopoly over our society. Digital business is revolutionary only in the way it camouflages business as usual.’
I’ll leave the last word to Daniel Patrick Moynihan, sociologist and former Democratic Senator for New York.
“The central conservative truth is that it is culture, not politics, that determines the success of a society. The central liberal truth is that politics can change a culture and save it from itself.”
If business is really going to contribute to a better world then we’re best advised to focus on providing better strategy for culture to eat.
Eaon Pritchard is strategic planning director for Red Jelly Australia
I see these things as completely linked rather than one vs. the other. Your internal culture is surely just one (albeit really important) output of a bigger strategy? Or have I misread this?
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My start up has a pool table and basketball hoop what more culture do you want?.
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Good article/piece
A culture that isn’t aligned to the strategy and business goals is pretty useless unless it can be coralled,galvanised, focussed and led to achieve the organisational goals.I have worked in both culture led and strategy led. Culture led organisations can be highly effective in small companies but the larger they become the more unwieldy and fractured they become in delivering on the brand promise( which you would think manifests itself in the brand premise in communications and delivery of a unified branded customer experience).
This is especiallly true in service based brands like banking/Telco’s etc where people become part of the product offering with ensuing variability in the delivery of the service.
The truth in my view is that companies that do this well let “the brand” and it’s values speak throughout the delivery of product/service from innovation, NPD to product/service management to communications and product and service delivery culture. Then you have an aligned, living breathing strategy, brand and culture. If marketers, communicators ask themselves “does this reflect the brand and its values” as the benchmark then customers will enjoy a unified brand experience from what they thoght they where buuing into to what “they got”
The biggest problen for marketers and communicators is that senior managers in companies see brand as the wrapping and not the primary source of a differentiated offer that serves a purpose to engage positively with the consumer repeatedly.
And its going to get a lot worse with digital platforms and digital agencies profffering automation of sales and communications through online behavioural triggers.
driven by algorithms as a new utopia for ROI and efficiency.
Of course that may help in the short term $ but it will not in my opinion build long term brand value or stick.
Perhaps we need to rrevisit strategy and creativity as a key driver and pillar of cultural and organisational behaviour . Just sayin!
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Perhaps Culture is the muesli and Strategy is the milk.
Culture on it’s own means you have to chew harder to get results.
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Culture, vision, offering, strategy are the ingredients for success. I don’t think one can overcome the others. The balance have to be right to work. Too much emphasise on the culture aspect of any business will not mask the lack of strategy for long. Cold strategy with no culture will not attract business partners. After all Human beings based collaboration on rational fact and a big part of instinct ( What my impression of the business, like factor ) at any level.
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Great article.
‘We need to change our culture.’ how often do you hear that?
But how do you plan to do that? By changing attitudes?
Good luck with that.
Motivation and attitudes are the hardest things to change.
But strategy? You can change, because strategies are behaviours.
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This all depends on how we define strategy. If strategy is ‘how we get to where we need to get to’, then I think it does come after culture. Definitely.
However, this doesn’t mean culture doesn’t go hand-in-hand with brand or having a sense of direction – if that’s what we’re getting at.
If we understand brand as a strongly defined vision and purpose, then I think that definitely (and perhaps definitively) helps shape culture. Without some kind of direction and sense of ‘why we’re here’, a good culture is going to be hard to maintain. Ok, so you might not call this sense of direction ‘brand’ – you might call it leadership or something else – but whatever you call it, it needs to come before culture.
After that, strategy is what you set and adjust depending on how the landscape shifts over time. And with a strong culture in support, you’re more likely to get to where you need to get to.
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