Culture does not eat Strategy for Breakfast.
Culture.
What the hell is Culture?
Who you are is not the values you list on the wall.
It’s not what you say at an All-hands.
It’s not your marketing campaign.
It’s not even what you believe.
It’s what you do.
What you do is who you are.Culture is how your company makes decisions when you’re not there.
Companies — just like gangs, armies, and nations — are large organisations that rise and fall because of the daily micro-behaviours of the human beings that compose organisations.
BUT
Great culture won’t ensure success.
So, why bother?
In the end, the people who work for you won’t remember the press release or the awards. They’ll lose track of the quarterly ups and downs. They may even grow hazy about the products.
But your team will never forget how it felt to work there, or the kind of people they became as a result. 💕
You might have heard the saying "Culture eats Strategy for Breakfast."
But that's not true.
The truth is that culture and strategy do not compete.
Neither eats the other.
For Culture & Strategy to be effective, they must be Coherent.
Examples
Facebook's "move fast and break things" culture wouldn't work for Airbus’ strategy to build airplanes.
Amazon's frugality culture wouldn't work for Apple to design beautiful products, conversely, Apple's design obsession culture wouldn't work at Amazon to deliver products at the lowest cost.
Does Your Culture support Your Strategy?
I wish I came up with this.
I didn’t :)
Most of the above is from my most recent read “What you do is Who you are“ by Ben Horowitz that I can highly recommend. It was a small part of the book that I couldn’t resist sharing as it resonated deeply.