Culture does eat strategy for breakfast, but it's missing something big...

I’ve spent several years in Transformation, from managing multi million dollar global Transformations to my early years delivering projects. What has frustrated me for several years is the lack of articles on the subject that provoke my thoughts or give me a clear steer on how to improve my own performance in this area.

So I’ve decided to write some articles based on my own experience - this isn’t academic research, but it is learned on the coal face of observation of multiple organisations, global ones, small ones - across different sectors. Some of it is learned from awesome people I've worked with, some of it learned by testing something, loving the successful initiatives and learning fast from failure. There is no one size fits all management model of how to do Transformation, because every company is different.

My first article of a series about Transformation explores why strategy and culture aren’t enough especially in times of change and transformation.

Much has been said about culture and strategy’s importance to organisational success, I wholeheartedly agree with this, but I have often found myself gritting my teeth when someone says “Culture eats strategy for breakfast” which is attributed to Peter Drucker, an American management consultant and academic, and to many a legend.

Firstly, the prevailing view is that he didn’t actually say it. Secondly, what’s the teeth gritting all about? (Hint – it is missing something big).

What about the strategy part?

A well researched and written strategy gives a company a focus for planning and doing. It gives guide rails for decision making at Board level, and equally important for management to make their own decisions about the right course of action, avoiding escalating upwards for someone else to decide which way to go.

I’ve seen a couple of successful companies with great cultures without much of a strategy – they weren’t start ups, but had revenues of less than $400m, they functioned pretty well, but both ran into trouble when double digit growth was no longer a given…so I conclude having a decent strategy is very important.

And the culture?

Culture is varied and even within an organisation it can be different between functions or markets. There are neutral cultures – neither a force for good nor bad – these are the norm.

Toxic cultures tend to be the ones to watch out for. They won’t be successful because people are too scared to speak up, disagree or push the alarm button when things go wrong. The Executive team may be divided – misaligned objectives or elbows out to survive, and this trickles down through their departments and co-operation and team work vanish into thin air, leaving stress, overwork and frustration. Even one rogue department can cause organisational disfunction.

I’ve only ever seen one company whose culture and behaviours were aligned with its stated values across the globe, and that made it rather special

…this taught me that companies should actually aim for an effective culture or fix a toxic one vs. strive for perfection.

But does culture eat strategy for breakfast?

Yes, probably, because it doesn’t matter how impactful, exciting and sensible your strategy looks like, an ineffective or toxic culture will act as a drag on your ambitions. It’s also critical to communicate your strategy in a culturally appropriate way, and you will probably need to redefine your organisational purpose and desired behaviours to make the strategy implementation successful.

And the teeth gritting?

When a company redefines its strategy, a transformation follows. A good culture and good strategy alone will not ensure a successful one.

Think of it as an industrial style tripod floor lamp – at the top is your organisational purpose guiding your way, then below it are three supporting legs – culture, strategy and delivery capability. They all need to be aligned, but the delivery capability is often ignored or neglected.

Most firms deliver their business as usual reasonably well, but it is during transformation where delivery can be weak – think of the statistics on how many programmes fail. A new market, service, product , system or operating model will need some different mindsets and skillsets.

So what about delivery capability?

Delivery of core operational activities are of course critical to an organisation, but my meaning of delivery capability is the transformation capability that will enable the strategy by changing or improving an organisation’s core activities.

Delivery capability is all about the people– their skillsets, mindsets, prior experiences and how they organise to deliver a transformation, its governance and measurements of progress.

The larger the company, the more complex its markets, capabilities, channels, so a stronger and experienced delivery capability is needed to be successful. Specialist skill, experience and mindset are critical.

Sadly, in my experience of Transformations, there is often push back from leaders to hire enough interim or permanent specialist resources to deliver – be it low balling day rates, hiring reduced experience levels to minimise cost, reducing overall numbers of dedicated resource and especially challenging the need for change management specialists. Often, these skills are so different from those needed in core operations, they are hard for management to understand entirely.

This is dangerous – your ability to deliver to cost, on time and effectively will be diminished and it creates risks - the larger or more consumer facing your company is, project failures, especially IT ones can directly impact your customer base and reputation via column inches in the newspapers.

Having said all of this, it is the role of an experienced Transformation Director to guide an organisation through these challenges, to explain and educate what is needed and why, to anticipate risks and challenges by bringing their experience to bear.

My next series of articles will focus on different aspects of delivery capability, starting with the beginning of a Transformation – the benefits and business cases.

Feel free to make comments!