Rethinking strategy and culture: Moving beyond overused buzzwords

Every year, organisations gather for the ritual of crafting "strategies" and refining "cultures."

But beneath the glossy presentations and corporate slogans lies a harsh reality: these terms are often placeholders for vague aspirations rather than actionable or systemic concepts. "Strategy" has become shorthand for lists of initiatives far from strategic, while "culture" is reduced to inspirational posters and HR buzzwords to embolden the status quo. This isn't just a semantic problem; it's a fundamental misstep that prevents leaders from leading effectively, especially in turbulence.

Are the prevailing approaches to strategy and culture truly helping organisations, or are they masking more profound failures in how we think and lead?

Why strategy and culture often miss the mark

1. Strategy is more than a checklist

Too often, strategy is confused with execution. Leaders create static plans disconnected from the fluidity of the external environment. Systems thinkers like Donella Meadows emphasise that systems and the strategies designed to navigate them are dynamic. Strategy is not about controlling every variable but about sensing, adapting, and co-evolving with the environment.

Yet many organisations persist with outdated, mechanistic approaches. Evidence points to a staggering failure rate: up to 90% of strategies fail to deliver. Why? These so-called strategies are little more than bundles of tasks labelled as "strategic," lacking the coherence or adaptability to respond to change.

2. Culture cannot be declared

Culture, like strategy, is an emergent property. It arises from the complex interplay of systems, structures, and behaviours. Declaring a "safety culture" or "innovation culture" does not make it so. True culture reflects what happens when no one is watching, not what's written in handbooks or showcased in town halls.

The patterns within organisations often reflect a disjointed reality. Policies intended to drive collaboration may inadvertently reinforce silos. Efforts to "embed culture" frequently treat it as a product to be delivered, ignoring that it emerges from relationships and feedback loops.

3. Structural coupling: The missing link

Drawing from systems principles, particularly structural coupling, we see that the organisation's interaction with its environment shapes both strategy and culture. Organisations that fail to maintain coherence between their internal structures and external demands quickly lose viability. Strategy collapses into reactive tactics, and culture becomes performative rather than authentic.

Consider organisations struggling with digital transformation. Their strategies often focus on deploying new tools rather than adapting their structures to foster real innovation. Without structural alignment, these efforts are doomed to deliver surface-level results.

Challenging prevailing assumptions

The flawed practices of strategy and culture

Mainstream business culture perpetuates a myth that strategy and culture are tools leaders can impose top-down. Social media amplifies this fallacy with oversimplified platitudes about vision, mission, goals and fun culture stories. Leaders, inundated with frameworks and "best practices," risk becoming spectators in their organisations, stuck in a cycle of reactive decision-making.

Research reinforces this disconnect:

• Strategy Theatre: The annual offsite often resembles performance art, crafting visions and mission statements that rarely translate into meaningful action and somehow focus more on marketing to subdue employees. Studies highlight that these exercises seldom engage with systemic uncertainties or the broader ecosystem.
• Cultural Tokenism: A 2023 Deloitte report found that while 82% of leaders viewed culture as critical to success, fewer than half felt confident in their ability to influence it effectively, which is a damming indictment with the amount of "expert" culture consultants and organisational self-help books.
• Context-free Surveys: Employee feedback surveys, often vague and context-free but still considered a cornerstone of cultural improvement, frequently result in sub-optimal interventions. Leaders cherry-pick issues to address, focusing on visible but superficial changes. These tick-box exercises rarely address systemic challenges, leaving employees disillusioned, deeper problems unexamined, or issues worsening.

These issues highlight that we need a fundamental rethink. It's not enough to tweak these practices.

The systems lens: Rethinking strategy and culture

1. Strategy as a pattern of interaction

Patrick Hoverstadt's Patterns of Strategy offers a powerful reframing: strategy is not a document but a pattern of interactions within a dynamic ecosystem. Leaders must recognise their organisations as part of a web of interconnected relationships, customers, competitors, regulators, and societal forces all influencing and influenced by each other.

Continuously mapping these relationships and testing assumptions about yourself and the actors gives useful insight into meaningfully achieving fit with the external environment. Strategy becomes an iterative process, not a static plan.

2. Culture as emergence

Rather than striving to "embed" culture, leaders should focus on designing systems that allow desired behaviours to emerge naturally. This approach to culture aligns with the principles of structural coupling, ensuring that internal structures evolve in harmony with external demands. For example, a "safety culture" emerges when operational feedback loops incentivise safe practices, not because leadership mandates it.

3. Viability through coherence

The Viable System Model (VSM) underscores the importance of subsystem coherence. For strategy and culture to succeed, they must reinforce each other. Misaligned systems—for example, punitive performance metrics undermining collaborative culture—breed dysfunction.

Practical recommendations for leaders

1. Stop Playing Strategy GamesChallenge the strategy process. Ask: are we genuinely exploring uncertainties and external dynamics, or are we creating a narrative for internal consumption?
2. Focus on Patterns, Not SlogansMove beyond "types" of culture (e.g., "innovation culture") to design systems that naturally foster the desired interactions and behaviours.
3. Embrace Feedback and IterationTreat strategy as a hypothesis. Use continuous feedback loops to test and refine assumptions.
4. Align Structures and EnvironmentUse structural coupling as a guide. Ensure that internal policies, behaviours, and systems are in sync with the demands of your environment.

Traditional and faddy approaches to strategy and culture are no longer fit for purpose. These concepts' persistent overuse and misuse have led many organisations to mistake activity for progress. Leaders must rethink these fundamentals not as standalone tools but as emergent properties of dynamic systems.

It's time to ask harder questions and abandon ineffective practices. By embracing systems thinking and challenging traditional norms, we can unlock the full potential of strategy and culture.

How do you navigate strategy and culture in your organisation? What practices have you found ineffective or transformative? Let's rethink together.

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