Strategies inviting culture for breakfast

How can we facilitate more meaningful strategy development that better help organisations enhance their culture and create stronger progress at large?

It is a widespread idea that strategies have limited impact on the culture of organisations. And the other way around, even the most promising strategies can be held back and erode when out of sync with culture, hence the saying that culture eats strategies for breakfast.

“Culture eats traditional strategies for breakfast.”

What if there could be synergies rather than conflicts between strategies and culture? What if these two important aspects of organisations could be developed in parallel to fuel outstanding progress and value creation? Here are some thoughts on how to make this happen, based on my experience from strategy development in different contexts during the past 25 years:

1. It is all about people!

Strategies have historically been lighthouses of organisational development, with a strong focus on having the “right” and “smartest” direction, priorities, and plans. In many cases, strategy development has even been outsourced to managements consultants (such as myself…) in the search for “better” strategies.

I will argue that these ideas are flawed, mainly for two reasons: First, strategies are never better than the people who are supposed to realize them, included their understanding, buy-in, and capabilities needed to do so. Secondly, people who will be part of realizing a strategy typically have the most knowledge within their respective domains. Hence, it makes a lot of sense to involve them in the strategy development through participatory processes that both integrate their knowledge and secure commitment.

“Strategies documents are dead. Long live the people envisioning and creating progress.”

2. Focus more on future opportunities than historical data

Traditional strategy development processes typically start out by analysing historical data as the basis for navigating the future. While such analysis can be helpful to align our world view, they can also be problematic if used without caution: First, they may reinforce existing rather than invite new thinking. Secondly, historical data are not necessarily good pointers for future opportunities in an increasingly VUCA world characterised by volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. This is particularly true for strategy development seeking long-term and radical progress rather than short-term and incremental improvements. Thirdly, even though historical data may point towards interesting opportunities they (alone) are seldom enough to spur human drive and willingness to change.

“Heartfelt intentions are more important than historical data.”

3. Strategy development as an ongoing navigation process

In a VUCA world it does not make sense to create static strategies that are updated infrequently. They rather need to be updated on an ongoing basis to reflect new events and knowledge, and/or allow for sufficient navigation space in strategy execution. Scaled agile and self-management practices such as Sociocracy 3.0 offer great frameworks for such responsive strategies and corresponding development efforts.

“Curiosity, learning, and agility will outperform static strategies.”

4. Which qualities and human traits will be needed?

As part of strategy development, it is important to define what outcome we want to create in the form of quantitative effect targets. But which quality improvements, such as new capabilities, are needed to realize our ambitions and fuel long-term progress? More specifically, which human traits such as mindsets and behaviours do we need and want to develop? This is where strategies really start to integrate with culture, in a way that strengthens the foundation for long-term success in a VUCA world where our ability to renew ourselves is and will be increasingly crucial.

“To create what we want we need to lean into what we want to become.”

5. Purpose as vehicle for drive, progress, and impact

Several factors suggest that it will become increasingly important for strategies to be purpose-oriented with a broad stakeholder and sustainability perspective in mind. First, as the sustainability agenda moves forward in most markets and society at large, organisations will increasingly be expected and required to step up their sustainability efforts. Secondly, being responsible and purposeful will in many cases be required for long-term survival as markets transition towards more sustainable solutions. Thirdly, and perhaps more importantly, truly purpose-driven strategies are more likely to fully unleash the drive and potential of people and thereby create outstanding cultures, progress, and impact.

“Purpose-oriented strategies serve as points of gravity for cultural development and progress at large.”

There is a lot more to say about strategy development, but from my side I believe these are the main points. What are your thoughts, reflections, ideas, or questions?