12 Oct 2009, Posted by Josh Allan Dykstra in Leadership, 3 Comments. Tagged culture, ideas, leading, organizations, strengths, talent

Culture Eats Strategy For Breakfast

Dr. Lee, the professor for my MBA International Management class, said something last month in DC that I hadn’t heard before:

“Culture eats strategy for breakfast.”

I’ve experienced this firsthand, as likely have you, although I never thought about it in this way before. How many times have we seen a “great idea” for our organization get buried… somehow, mysteriously, and at the end reflect back on the process only to realize we have no idea how exactly it died?

Short answer: the culture killed it.

In my last post, we talked about how to stop sucking and some other fundamental elements of talent theory. Well, the ideas of natural talent can also be extrapolated to groups of people, and even further out to organizations as a whole.

This is actually where much of a company’s original “culture” comes from. Where the natural proclivity of the leadership lies, therein you will find the ethos that trickles down and over time becomes ingrained into the very fabric of that culture.

Apple, Inc. is innovative, tight-lipped, opinionated, and has a high appreciation for aesthetics — much like Mr. Steve Jobs.

The Virgin Group is daring, eclectic, experimental, and adventurous — much like its founder, Sir Richard Branson.

These things are not coincidences.

To be sure, leaders change and things shift. But the notion of natural talent can give us some great insight into what’s driving the culture of our organization (it’s even more noticeable in small organizations).

If culture is going to eat your strategy for breakfast, this is a pretty important thing.

Leverage knowledge of the natural bend of your company to help you position and present your strategies. Instead of fighting the culture, you’ll be going with the current.

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