“Culture eats strategy for breakfast”
Peter Drucker
A decade long study looking at culture, discovered, that when an organisation builds a culture that values the needs of customers, employees and stockholders and encourages leadership from all levels within the organisation, they can increase revenue by over 700%.
Getting culture right can indeed have a huge impact on an organisation.
However, I was fascinated by another finding of the study that was far more interesting. Along side the conclusion on the benefits of a strong culture on the revenue, was a discovery that corporate cultures that inhibit strong long-term financial performance are not rare and more importantly they can develop very easily, even in firms that are full of reasonable, intelligent and highly capable people.
Let me say that again – a culture that actively inhibits long term performance can grow in an organisation run by intelligent and capable people. So even if you have a skilled team full of people with a track record in other organisations and demonstrable ability in their field, it is no guarantee that the organisation will be successful.
Or as Peter Drucker once said, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” Good or bad, culture will make or break your organisation despite the people.
Make sure someone is actively responsible for monitoring and championing the culture you want. If it organically develops regardless of how intelligent and brilliant you are, it could easily develop in a detrimental way.
Find out how The Culture Guy can help you develop the right culture – we even have some reductions on our training and consultancy for a short period.