Why Your Strategy Depends On Your Culture
Why Your Strategy Depends On Your Culture
“Culture eats strategy for breakfast” is the famous quote attributed to the legendary management consultant Peter Drucker. Of course, the culture proponents are cheering it on, saying it validates their beliefs. In contrast, the strategy proponents say it’s misrepresented and offer their ideas, stating, “What he really meant was…”. Either way, when taken at face value, a team with a dysfunctional culture, the wrong people or a poor vision will struggle to effectively execute a strategy, no matter how brilliant that strategy is.
And here at Evolution Partners, this is our lived experience daily as we scale up mid-market firms. It doesn’t matter how brilliant the strategy we build with the leadership team, unless we have the right people in the right seats, doing the right things the right way within a cohesive team, the strategy will fall over, or at the very least fail to achieve its potential.
So how can we consider how these two critical elements interact?
The culture must be strong enough to support the execution of the strategy.
Suppose your strategy is to take on an established industry with a new offering to create a unique and valuable position for your firm. In that case, your chances of success are minimal if your team is ineffective.
What of breakfast?
Breakfast is the first meal of the day. It’s foundational. The strategy depends on the strength of the culture before it can proceed. They interact to achieve your goals.
Imagine a horizontal line that represents a measurement of your culture’s strength. The longer the line, the stronger your culture.
Next, imagine a vertical line that interacts with your cultural line, which represents a measurement of the strength of your strategy. Again, the longer the line, the better your strategy.
And because these two are interdependent, we can connect the points to appreciate that the overall surface area grows as they grow.
In the examples above, we’re saying that regardless of how good your strategy is, it relies on the right people doing the right things in the right way within a cohesive culture. If indeed these two interact, then here’s what it would visually look like if your company’s culture weren’t perhaps good enough to execute your strategy.
We have significantly less surface area overall, and it’s out of proportion. Instead we want to be growing the culture and the strategy, knowing they are interdependent.
If you’d like to learn more about how we can help you to build a great business, contact us for a chat.
