Culture or Strategy: which is first?

Culture or Strategy: which is first?

strategy vs culture 3

How do we understand Culture when it refers to organizations?

We all have read many descriptions and sayings about Culture:
It is the characteristic behavior of the organization; the way we do things around here; the glue that binds us all; the non-verbal communication that has been established among us; the things that are taken for granted; the principles and beliefs that are held sacred at this place; the alignment of people’s thoughts, principles and beliefs; the general atmosphere that surrounds our daily work.

Culture can take many forms:
The aristocracy culture, where the emphasis is on the talented and those that excel
The democratic culture with weight on the opinions of the many
The consensus culture requiring all to agree before any action is taken
The hierarchical culture where respect and obedience are demanded to the higher ups
The team culture where the team is the functional unit and any individualistic spirit must surrender to the whole. 
The experiment culture that encourages trial and accepts error as part of the learning process
The infallible culture that tolerates no mistakes
The customer centric that treats customer as king
The efficiency culture that it demands a constant search of producing more

Culture does not readily change as it becomes by design deep rooted and is based on principles and beliefs.

What about Strategy? What is Strategy?
It is a planned way to win.
It is a planned way to put to best use our distinct advantages
It is a planned way to form a competitive advantage
It is a planned way to take the best position to tackle best upcoming events
It is a planned route or direction to cut corners

Strategy can be described by many forms but whatever the form, it has one element common: Planned and not arriving haphazardly from serendipity.
Many times strategy is directional and as such requires an alignment of forces. 
This alignment comes via culture.

Different strategies require different cultures.
For example, if a company is sailing the waters of growth and success, it may adopt a strategy with emphasis on production efficiency and less on experimentation while if the enterprise is trying to win market share from established players, it may adopt a culture that will nurture experimentation and initiatives at the expense of efficiency. If decisions are to be made quickly, the individualistic culture wins over that of the team.

Which comes first? Culture or Strategy?

Sometimes the two start together. The right chief at the right time with the right approach and the company is a success. But when later on the market needs change, what happens? We change strategy first and then work very hard to align our staff to support it. In other words, we make our culture follow our Strategy.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/culture-strategy-which-first-panikos-sardos?trk=prof-post

By |December 28th, 2015|Uncategorized|0 Comments

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