With my eyes shut and such heavy strategy names like Sun Tzu,
Niccolo Machiavelli, Carl Von Clausewitz, Karl Marx, Alexander Herzen,
Mikhail Bakunin; their documented lives and the practical ways they
employed strategy running through my mind [thanks to my new Strategy
Bible – ‘Strategy: A History’ by (Emeritus professor of war studies) Lawrence Freedman
(Financial Times best book on strategy from as far back as 2013)]; I
cannot but shake my head and mind to the myth we have crowned strategy
with today…
“ ‘What is strategy?’ Is the most googled phrase that contains strategy”. Those were the words of Bradley Brezinski (one of my strategy mentors).
Despite
the plethora of materials and resources in our knowledge-age; people,
corporates and entities the world over still strive to substantiate the
essence of strategy. I am not going to add to the over 2 billion results
google fetches you when you type the phrase -‘What is Strategy?’, but I would simply touch on one of the very many crucial aspects of implementing strategy in a corporate environment.
Of
what good is all the strategy in the world without its
implementation? May I swiftly accentuate organizational CULTURE and
possibly make sense of how it may help to implement strategy.
Borrowing
a leaf from Wikipedia, Organizational culture encompasses values and
behaviors that contribute to the unique social and psychological
environment of a business.
Organizational culture is a chief
influencer of the way people react within an entity. Since implementing
strategy boils down to how people act and the corresponding reactions to
those actions, its indications, counter-indications and the allocation
of resources through it all; then it is key to initiate a cultured (pun intended) reaction zone in the least.
No
one else is better positioned than the manager – whose primary work is
making decisions. An effective manager (that thinks through the process
before deciding) directly influences the actions and inactions of
others, whether with direct reports or verticals. At work yesterday, I
made several decisions and whether I want to or not, I will be making
more tomorrow. Deciding nothing is in itself a decision until I have the
power to freeze time.
These daily decisions form the cradle of
culture. Not that fancy prose the HR and/or executive team came up with.
Those are at best the stated values and they have to be exhibited, then
become behavioral norms that influence decisions. Everyday decisions
especially by managers who directly influence the actual ‘doers’ in
every organization drive culture.
It is critical to expend resources in initiating the cultured zone
within which managers and decision makers (with influence on people and
teams) will execute the everyday decisions as this is the core of the
last-mile in implementing strategy.
In Peter Drucker’s words – Culture does eat strategy for breakfast!
…opening my eyes to this Ah-mazing (as Yemi Faseun puts it) quote on page 575 cannot be mere coincidence, as it sums up my exact closing thought
“In
theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice
there is.” – Yogi Berra (also attributed to Albert Einstein).
#Culture #Strategy #Management
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Privileged to
have worked across the high-capital construction, fast-paced e-commerce
& the precision-driven outsourcing industries; 'Kayode KOLADE is a
Business Strategist and Project Manager with experience in People,
Process & Operations Optimization, a Soft Skills Trainer and Mentor
with a creed to continuous improvement. A Fellow of both The Institute
of Leadership & Management and The Learning & Performance
Institute.
