We love strategy.
If you’ve read some of our other blogs, you might think that is not the case. So, I repeat, we love strategy. What’s not cool about thinking up grand schemes for what the world could be if we all get together and head in the same direction at the same time?
What we don’t love is the fact that people and organizations focus almost exclusively on strategy and ignore culture.
Culture and Strategy are, in fact, two sides of the same coin.
Ideas are the wellspring of action. They keep us fresh and get us up in the morning. Ideas are one of the things we talk about that actually matter and make a difference when they are truly new ideas. Ideas are the potential to make the world a better place.
But ideas in and of themselves are not the real world, and they are not something that we can experience. Human beings are deeply experiential creatures. As babies, we put things in our mouths to find out what they are. As children we make up games and change the rules as we go along. As kids we get on our bikes and we go places, over hills, around corners, and through forests just to see what’s on the other side.
We are constantly seeking, and then sharing, experiences.
Culture is an experience. It’s what you are left with at the end of a conversation with your boss: the experience of sharing trust and gaining wisdom, or the experience of withholding communication. It’s the experience of being in a team: being understood and supported inside a group that will still be there for you win or lose, or being held apart and distant without knowing where you fit or what you can count on.
If you are not dealing with what your team experiences in their accountabilities, in their interactions, in their relationships and communication, then you are not dealing with culture. And when you are not dealing with culture, you’re only real hope is that your strategy is perfectly aligned with the current market, the current conditions, and the current signs of the times.
But how long does that magical moment of alignment ever last?
