How To Know When You Have Strategy and Culture In Sync

The age-old debate that argues whether organizations should be heavily or even, exclusively focused towards culture or strategy could not be further from the truth.

Have you put more emphasis on strategy or culture in your organization?  Do you feel as if one is more important than the other or are they mutually critical?

What or who has had the most influence in shaping your thoughts on the topic?

The analogy that positions strategy and culture as a collision between top heavyweights in a boxing match, with a clear winner and loser is simply poor guidance for the modern-day organization.  Following this advice will undoubtedly back your organization into a corner.

Starting today, I want you to think of strategy and culture in your business being less of a collision and more of a fusion.  The more appropriate visual is the canoe.  If you’ve ever had to navigate a canoe down a winding, obstacle-heavy river, you know how important it is that the bow and the stern are synchronized.

Picture a canoe as your organization and the river as your specific niche or industry in which you operate.  Think of the paddler in the bow as your culture, providing power to your business.  Whereas the stern is your strategy, requiring a steady rudder or guide to help navigate the vessel.  When the bow and the stern (culture and strategy) are working together, the canoe is very effective in creating forward movement.  Or, better yet – when culture defines how you act, strategy tells us where we will end up if we act ‘that way’.

Conversely, if you decided to put more weight in one end of the boat or the other, you’re almost forced to rely on the river current, brute force and heroic acts to navigate the vessel.  In an external environment littered with obstacles and unpredictability (like a river), you’re likely to end up adrift or stuck.  Trying to choose one without the other is equally frustrating – in other words, if you don’t have power, you’re motionless, and if you are without steering, your directionless.

Symptoms of having ‘too much weight’ in one end of the boat or other can range from high turnover, indecisiveness, customer churn, fear of the unknown across the external environment, lack of execution, as well as stagnant revenue and profit growth (aka the ‘plateau’).

So…maybe it’s time to take off the gloves and grab the paddles.

You’ll be amazed at what happens when there is a fusion between strategy and culture in your organization.

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