Read on Twitter
1/ Have you ever wondered what "culture eats strategy for breakfast" actually means?
I'm walking, slip on some ice, have a heart attack, and die (I know, morbid).
Now the coroner would say I technically died of a heart attack but most people would agree it was the ice.
I'm walking, slip on some ice, have a heart attack, and die (I know, morbid).
Now the coroner would say I technically died of a heart attack but most people would agree it was the ice.
2/ In organizations, it's common to reflect on a mistake or something not going well and blame it on strategy or execution. We missed a product launch, sales isn't positioning well, code is buggy, we're targeting the wrong customers, etc. These are heart attacks.
3/ Instead, it's more helpful to go a layer deeper to the root cause (the ice). The underlying *system* that drives all orgs are:
- People (talent)
- org structure
- culture (values and norms)
- processes
Ppl are inputs into this system that *produce* strategies and execution
- People (talent)
- org structure
- culture (values and norms)
- processes
Ppl are inputs into this system that *produce* strategies and execution
4/ But the real catch is that this system is not static, it can change itself. At the heart of this change is culture. A great culture will course correct and reconfigure all of the other inputs (people) and parts of the system (processes and structure).
5/ If you look at @michaelxbloch thread here on $DASH, you'll see that reasons 1-3 were Uber's mistakes in strategy and execution (heart attacks). The root cause of these were actually 4 (the ice; culture, org, structure, and people). https://twitter.com/michaelxbloch/status/1335608284338909187?s=20
6/ So the next time your org isn't firing on all cylinders, it might worth it to take a step back and really think about what's the root cause? Almost everything can be traced back to people, structure, process, and especially culture.
