“Culture Eats Strategy For Breakfast”

As evident in the ‘great resignation,’ people are leaving their jobs in record numbers - making Peter Drucker’s prophetic statement 30 years ago, based on the advancement of the ‘knowledge worker’: “The lifelong workforce contract has been irrevocably broken.”

What Drucker couldn’t have predicted was the tsunami impact COVID has had on the workplace. A side effect of the tsunami, however, is a convincing argument that people can be productive working remotely. Drucker’s knowledge worker of 30 years ago is now armed with high quality video technology and team-based collaboration software - calling into question the very nature of what a company is and how work is organized and executed.

Executives are facing a new challenge however - one that Drucker also took note of. The increased autonomy of today’s knowledge worker - in terms of the work they do and who they do it for - has unwittingly brought about a more ‘mercenary’ workplace culture. Individuals seeking work are in a stronger position relative to the organizations looking to hire them.

But executives know that mercenary workers aren’t strong enough to win in today’s market. Winning requires synergy. In the simplest of terms, synergy occurs when 2+2 = multiples of 4. How do you get synergy? In our view, synergy is a state that emerges when recurrent action, shaped by a compelling narrative about what the collective can accomplish, is more attractive than what individuals can achieve, acting alone.

We see this again and again in the world of sports. We see this in heroic projects like sending a team of people into the outer reaches of space or finding cures to deadly diseases. They remind us there is a vast difference between ‘laying bricks’ and ‘building cathedrals.’

How do you build a compelling narrative? We have found it originates in the answers to four essential questions that resonate with the collective:

1. What future unites and inspires us?

2. How do we win?

3. Who are we?

4. What metrics matter for our success?

We call that your Strategic Framework. It is sometimes spoken in terms of an organization’s ‘north star.’ Seen from this perspective, culture is no longer ‘eating strategy for breakfast’ but rather, culture dictates your strategy.

Get in touch with us to learn more.