Culture, strategy, and your pirate ship

"Culture eats strategy for breakfast." - Peter Drucker

It's become a standard business trope after management consultant Peter Drucker allegedly expressed the sentiment that culture outshines business strategy.

There's a degree of hyperbole to Drucker's words. Still, the influence of a strong corporate culture in 2022 is more critical now than ever. You'll be disappointed in your results after chasing lofty business goals if your corporate culture isn't prepared.

Aligning your #culture to your business strategy is imperative for a high-performing office.

Think of your business like a pirate ship.

Your strategy and your leaders are the map and navigator, setting the ship's direction by elaborating your plans and focusing on your goals in an official and structured way so your employees understand their purpose.

Your #corporateculture is the sails that propel your ship toward accomplishing your goals. Your people live and work by those shared values and beliefs in their daily lives. The misalignment will send your boat well off course.

Does your culture fit your strategy?

How can we do an assessment and find ways to align the two?

Where are we now?

PwC has an excellent survey to gauge corporate culture. It offers plenty of insights to analyze the current situation.

Questions are offered on a sliding scale. All employees are asked questions that intend to show either an alignment of culture or a disconnect.

• Are there single points of accountability, or are decisions made by a consensus?
• Do interactions tend to be polite and cordial, or with the acceptance of conflict?
• Is the organization focused on specific priorities, or is it open to new opportunities as they emerge?
• Is your organization comfortable with risk, or is it risk-averse?
• Is your organization comfortable with formal processes, or does it encourage improvisation?

The complete questionnaire is more in-depth, but these five give you a quick look at the intention. They provide a framework for creating survey questions pertinent to your business and intended corporate culture.

Suppose your company encourages improvisation over comfort in a formal process. In that case, it might mean the current procedures are insufficient for your team to accomplish their goals, and improvisation is a requirement rather than a special skill.

Your employees' answers are neither right nor wrong but demonstrate their perception.

When you have data from the survey, you can compare it to your ideal corporate culture. It will show alignment as an entity and which departments, even employees, are either aligned or misaligned. With that data, you can begin adjusting to your culture or business strategy.

These cultural traits are neither right nor wrong; each serves a purpose in the appropriate setting.

Being known for risk-taking isn't a positive for a consumer-facing financial institution.

Yet, it's a positive in #creativeagency when taking creative risks to stand apart from the crowd will earn your business more credibility.

A deep dive into culture survey data can highlight other potentially troubling aspects of your current culture that could derail your business strategy.

If your company employees emphasize a high degree of conflict tolerance and resilience, they may face excessive conflict, requiring over-reliance on resiliency, which could lead to staff burnout and turnover.

When you analyze the results and see a sizeable culture-strategy disconnect, resist the urge to make a company-wide, cosmic shift to every disconnect.

Distill the most critical cultural points that impact your business goals, celebrate where you're aligned and make a concerted effort to shift where you're misaligned.

The pirate ship will turn, but give it time and focus on the differences that make the difference.

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