How inappropriate!

“Culture eats strategy for breakfast” is a famous quote from legendary management consultant and writer Peter Drucker.

I am a fan of Drucker, for the most part I find something in his writing that resonates; this is one of the times I have a slight difference of opinion.

We know that he didn't mean that strategy was unimportant – rather that a powerful and empowering culture was a surer route to organisational success. I am the view that considering both culture and strategy as separate identities, as implied by Drucker, is an overly simplistic philosophy.

Over the last 5 years we have worked extremely hard to create the most appropriate culture at Hamilton City Council. Many may have picked up that I used the word “appropriate”. This wasn’t a typo or a poor choice of word. It was deliberate.

I will get to culture soon, but firstly strategy.

The Mayor and Councillors of Hamilton have developed a suite of impressive strategies – all designed to deliver a better place for this and the next generations of Hamiltonians. As an organisation we have developed a robust strategy to respond to their vision. The entire premise of the organisation strategy is unashamedly around improving the wellbeing of Hamiltonians, the strategy is simple but meaningful, and makes no apologies for being ambitious. We have outlined a clear strategic direction for the organisation, and embraced the direction set by the Mayor and Councillors, developing the outcomes and activities to get there. We could leave the strategy as it, do nothing else, have a series of internal meetings and hope to get there. Our strategy is important but pointless without the right culture – to this extent I agree with Drucker.

In previous posts I talked about our high-performance programme that is delivering amazing results. In partnership with Steel Performance Solutions we have utilise their frameworks to amplify our strategic trajectory – to do this we needed to define the culture we wanted. The culture created at Hamilton City Council is appropriate to our strategic ambitions. There I go again. Appropriate.

Our culture is meticulously designed to leverage our strategic ambitions. There is no accident or coincidence. Our culture and the collective mindset of the organisation is to deliver the strategy. The culture we have developed is entirely appropriate in the context of our strategic direction. 

My observations for what they are worth.

If you focus too much on culture, over strategy, you could end up building a culture where only a small number of your team are only just aligned with a mediocre strategy – the outcome of which will be your enterprise racing as fast as they can towards mediocrity.

The best you could hope for is that your culture wasn’t strategically appropriate at all, the behaviours didn’t resonate, and rather than race anywhere you stay put (well until someone else steps up and takes your position market and then you move backwards).

That is not me. That is not us.

This is where I argue that neither Strategy nor Culture is better, neither on their own will maximise the achievement of your strategic outcomes – together however, you might not only achieve your strategy you may exceed expectations.

Our culture at Hamilton City Council is more than how to behave, our values, or a collective vision of what is right or wrong, it appropriately aligns the organisation to be their best in the context of our strategic ambitions.

Our culture encourages the high performance, world class, pattern of behaviours required to maximise our strategic impact.

By investing in a culture that best aligns to our strategic intent means staff not only know what our strategic outcomes looks like but how we should individually and collectively behave in getting there.

The outcome of investing in an appropriate strategically aligned culture is more than strategic attainment – it pays dividends, a multiplier effect if you will. Our engagement scores have increased significantly over the last 3 years, productivity has increased, turnover is down, health and safety metrics are improving, our reputation has improved off the chart, and most importantly the wellbeing of our community has improved.

So, Peter – you were on to something. But in my view Culture and Strategy are not separate identities but are different sides of the same coin.