Peter Ranyard argues that charting a strategic course is only effective if you know your team is moving in the same direction.
Whilst chatting with a colleague over a long-anticipated lunch recently, the discussion turned to how important it is for people to fit the culture of an organisation. More specifically, how more important than strategy is developing, or in many cases, fixing the culture before attempting to work on strategy.
What is culture? As defined in Webster, it is “the ideas, customs, and social behaviour of a particular people or society and/or business”. What drives culture is simply how people and leaders respond to each other in the business and how others in the organisation see, react and respond to each other, whether with trust and respect or a complete lack of the same.
The success of any SME is to be able to align the values and culture of the business via the alignment of the individuals. Walk into any business, and in seconds you can taste a good versus bad culture.
Strategy cannot fix culture. Get the culture right, and any strategy can be implemented with ease and the cooperation of the team members. Many business leaders boast about having a great culture, not necessarily a great strategy. How many times have you heard in a job interview the comment that we have a great culture, we are like a great family and so forth.
Culture first before strategy.