THE CULTURE TRAP

Declining performance can usually be boiled down to issues with three C’s: Strategy Coherence, Management Commitment, and Organizational Capabilities.

What about Culture? We all know that culture eats strategy for breakfast. Well yes, but we suggest that you think of culture as an outcome rather than as an object to manipulate at will. More specifically, think of culture as the outcome of the 3 C’s. 

Coherence: An incoherent strategy breeds confusion about priorities and an organization that’s all over the place. Lots of initiatives and activity, yet little progress and few results.

Commitment: Inconsistent management commitment to strategy breeds cynicism and division across the organization as everyone works to protect their local agendas in the absence of a firm, unified, and consistent management steer.

Capability: A strategy that the organization is clearly not equipped to execute breeds apathy and a growing divide between top management and the broader organization.

Add any of these ingredients to the organizational stew, let them simmer for a while, and you end up with a meal of dysfunctional values and behaviors. The best people will gradually opt out, leaving you with less skills and capabilities. Now you’re stuck between a rock and a hard place. It’s tempting to diagnose the problem as organizational culture, but how do you ‘fix’ a culture? Going down the road of 10x mindsets, employee empowerment, or formulating a new set of company values is tantamount to putting lipstick on the pig. A better way forward is to start by thinking of culture as an outcome of strategic coherence, management commitment and organizational capabilities, and consider how you can improve and align these. 

Here are three concrete pointers for your next strategy process that will ripple through to positively impact your culture.

1) Make it a point to prioritize strategic coherence over management team harmony.

2) As you work through your strategic options and choices, think hard about the capabilities that will be required to carry these out and what gaps you need to fill as a result. Are you willing and able to fill these?

3) Before you present the new strategy to the organization, make sure that you and your colleagues are fully committed and that your scorecards reflect that.

Tick those three boxes, and in about a years time you’ll see and feel a different culture.