Feeding Culture to Fuel Business Success
This pithy modern adage underscores a timeless truth – toxic company culture can swiftly undermine the most artful strategy and meticulous planning.
Without the nourishing fuel of an intentionally designed and empowering organizational culture reinforcing goals, even the savviest business strategy often remains brittle and short-sighted. Leaders who instead nourish a thriving culture tightly integrated with forward-looking strategy can propel their organizations to achieve remarkable business results over the long term.
But culture-driven strategy requires moving beyond the catchy phrase to put specific leadership practices in place. What exactly does “culture eating strategy” mean on a practical level day-to-day? More importantly, what key moves separate purpose-driven companies successfully harnessing company culture as rocket fuel for business strategy from those derailed by disengaged and disconnected employees?
There are three vital, parallel areas leadership should focus on continuously to ensure culture and strategy remain not just aligned but actively amplifying each other.
Onboard Employees to Shared Values
A company’s values mean little if employees don’t understand how to enact those principles day-to-day. Onboarding staff to live stated shared values involves three key phases:
1.Set Behavioural Expectations
Leaders must define what cultural values like “integrity” or “innovation” practically translate to in terms of actions, mindsets and decisions. This means moving from abstract concepts to observable behaviours that reflect priorities in practice:
- Integrity could involve admitting mistakes rather than blaming others.
- Innovation may look like constructive challenging of status quo methods.
Spell out precise expectations and examples so values take shape through workplace habits.
2.Model Values Consistently
Leaders themselves must commit as a team to demonstrate desired cultural values through their own visible actions. Nothing erodes a culture quickly like leaders not walking the talk.
Take honesty for example – if executives shirk from transparency around business challenges, they signal that candor lacks importance despite platitudes. Modelling must be sustained consistency rather than sporadic.
3.Reinforce Values through Storytelling
Calling out positive examples where employees demonstrate company values through behaviours cements cultural priorities. Highlight cases of team members driving progress through living values during meetings, in company newsletters and at all hands events.
Storytelling converts abstract concepts into recognizable behavioural proof points. Product managers admitting what they don’t know rather than faking expertise stories reflect humility values manifesting in the organization.
Strategically Align Teams to Vision
A lofty strategic vision for where the company aims to push the industry in 5-10 years is inspiring. But executives can’t assume frontline employees intrinsically grasp how their individual roles ladder up to contribute toward those ambitious long-range goals.
Strategic alignment means clearly translating how specific teams and functions help accelerate progress toward the north star. This involves:
1.Cascade Company Priorities
Leadership must break down multi-year strategic priorities into supporting milestones for the current year and quarter. What building blocks for the strategic plan will R&D deliver? How will Marketing’s branding shift reflect bolder vision? Outline each groups’ contributions.
2.Localize Strategy for Functions
Next, functional leads should map strategic pillars to the charter and key results driving their particular groups in the horizon period. Engineering might detail how platform upgrades trace to growth promises. Finance can pinpoint forecasting accuracy goals underpinning new market funding.
3.Recognize Strategic Contributions
Reinforce strategic alignment culturally by recognizing employee examples of locally-owned initiatives supporting overall corporate priorities. Reward progress on customer insights unlocking platform expansion rather than solely quarterly usage stats themselves.
Engage Employees for Empowerment
Engaged employees who feel empowered to drive strategic progress through their work unlock discretionary effort and care. But fostering an empowering culture requires leaders intentionally building trust and collective ownership. Key areas for focus include:
1.Encourage Collaborative Input
Seeking broad cross-functional perspectives in major initiatives breaks down silos and spurs creative friction harnessing more collective intelligence. Staff forums, advisory panels, design thinking sessions and informal collaboration spaces allow varied insights to help shape execution planning. Empower teams through co-creation.
2.Address Experience Frictions
Periodic pulse surveys identifying biggest culture and workflow pain points plaguing employees provides actionable data on problems leadership can prioritize solving in the near-term. Listening to help prevent churn and inside-out advocacy requires identifying experience defects early and sincerely addressing issues raised even if difficult.
3.Grant Decision Agency
While strategic pillars are set from the top-down, provide frontline teams enough autonomy customizing supporting program design around local needs. Customer service teams might best gauge channel mix tuning service levels in various regions. Trust their judgment without prescribing universal programs ignoring unique contexts. Agency builds morale and effectiveness.
Rather than an abstract phrase, “culture eating strategy” contains very practical wisdom for leaders navigating relentless disruption. By first nourishing a resilient organizational culture fuelled by shared purpose, values and strategic alignment, forward-looking organizations amplify their probability of progress decade over decade.
The symbiosis of people and priorities compounds, creating a flywheel accelerating teams confidently toward big visions of progress and innovation for many generations ahead.
