Does Culture Really Eat Strategy For Breakfast?

Another Day In My MBA

Photo by Mark Fletcher-Brown on Unsplash

I like questioning my beliefs.

I’ve always preferred a strong company culture to a bold company strategy — because, in my experience, culture percolates while strategy stagnates.

But last evening’s strategic management lecture made me question this belief.

Here’s why.

Attackers love to win; defenders hate to lose.

What’s a better strategy: work on your weakness or accentuate your strengths?

On an individual level, I’d pick the latter. But as a strategy for a collective group, I’d want a balanced mix of people from both camps. An overarching culture begets homophily, a tactical strategy begets innovation from difference.

If the vision is the holistic development of the group/firm/company/empire (and it should be), you might want a top-down strategy that encourages cognitive diversity at the cost of cultural fit.

“Results-over-process” encourages short-termism

Like a jammy one-nil away from home on a rainy Tuesday night, barnstorming results often occur from incompetent processes.