Culture Eats Strategy for Breakfast

Let me begin with the famous Peter Drucker quote "Culture eats strategy for breakfast", which means that a great culture always triumphs regardless of how well you have defined your company's strategy. People responsible for building and nurturing the strategy get it wrong; your actions on the ground will not get the desired levels of success.   

Culture is hard to codify or define or confine within a set of parameters; culture is something to be experienced or felt. Have you ever wondered when you speak to people about culture, irrespective of whether this relates to the organizations they lead/work for or those they follow? People will invariably give you their impression or express how they feel about it. To begin with, the first step in building/ re-building an organization is establishing a culture that upholds a robust set of shared values. It is not just a part of a company's identity but will reflect your approach towards your employees, customers, business partners, vendors, and those who wish to engage/ work with you.  

 Leadership plays a vital role in building and nurturing a culture that improves trust, camaraderie and excites people to be a part of the journey. My pointers on being that leader:

Start with a 'Why'/Align to a purpose: As a leader, if you don't know why you do what you do, how will anyone else? A leader needs to have a clear 'Why' that allows people to build firm convictions around vision, beliefs, words, and actions. What's your WHY? Consider, for example, What are the motivations for your efforts? What drives you as an individual? Once you have this identified, hire, retain and promote team members whose individual 'Why' aligns with the Organisational 'Why.'

Know your people: Make it a point to connect with your team regularly, get to know them well, their backgrounds, and the perspectives that they bring, which will help you make fair decisions on the people side. Discuss and encourage diversity and uniqueness instead of being passive towards differences. A leader getting involved in an individual's journey gives employees the confidence to voice their opinions and concerns, making them feel like one entity with the company.

Relate to people's reality: Communicate your story and your experiences. In the fast-paced, short attention, result-oriented world we live in, relatability is the most incredible skill. Understanding their aspirations, motivations, accomplishments, struggles, insecurities and relating them with yours nurtures confidence, motivation to dream bigger, and thaws anxiety or nervousness. Bridge the gap between you and your team for them to feel comfortable enough to seek approach you, open up, and seek guidance from you.  

Recognition: A leader must recognize people's efforts and do this publicly. Recognizing and rewarding those who achieve outstanding results will make them feel valued in the organization and motivate them to keep delivering impressive results. To cultivate a culture of healthy, friendly competition, it is also critical to appreciate employees who go out of their comfort zone, experiment, fail, and go to lengths to derive desired returns regardless of the success rate. 

Be open to feedback: Feedback can make it or break it. Compassionate leaders take account of people's feedback, take note of the pain points, and act on them. They go out of their way to acquire feedback as people can often be hesitant to share criticism making the team feel secure and genuinely valued.

 Inspire: A successful leader prepares for any situation, good or bad. It is not constantly feasible to anticipate problems in foresight. However, it is paramount to stand with the team, inspire and push the team through the lows. The aim is to learn and grow with the team and prove that teamwork diminishes struggles greatly. Remember, there are no failures; there are only learnings.

Celebrate wins and failures: Wins and failures are part of life. A leader is optimistic and positive throughout, celebrating accomplishments and constantly attending to shortcomings. Your team will learn that there is no shame in coming up short as long as the intent and the effort was more than 100%, and there's always a chance to do better. 

Organizations develop a culture that inevitably gets built regardless of whether one invests time and energy to create this consciously or otherwise. The simple analogy is that plants tended to with care grow well and tend to be healthier than those that grow randomly and, in some cases, destroy the other plants that grow closer to them. When not built consciously, culture could create toxicity and negative energy and destroy the work environment, thereby impacting people adversely. Work culture is constantly evolving and changing. It is essential always to keep an open mind, accept the uncertainties, and always keep working on this aspect.