Story:
Culture Eats Strategy

Great post Jonathan. In my experience the situation you describe is fairly common - in organizations with very strong, hands-on leaders, oftentimes nearly all important decisions (and also many non-critical decisions) are sent upwards. The manager unwittingly encourages and perpetuates this type of behavior by insisting to be directly involved in all aspects of day-to-day operations and drowning out the voices of other senior managers.

It's interesting to watch what happens to a team's weekly management meeting when the leader is not available. Does the manager cancel the meeting? Or if he or she encourages the group to meet anyway, are they able to have a productive discussion, and do they have the courage to agree on action plans and move forward, even without the boss's explicit OK?

Sometimes teams will self correct as trust develops in both directions, but by the time this happens it may be too late. What's remarkable in your story is that you realized straight away that you were taking over a group like this, and you decided to take specific actions to change the culture.

I noticed last year during a steering committee meeting that you chaired that even though you clearly had your own point of view on the topics being discussed, you were pointedly seeking the opinions of others and encouraging discussion. Now I understand a little more of the background - thanks for sharing.

Jonathan it is a good case study for the culture - leadership implications. In fact that is the main theme of my BA thesis based on my own organisation. I wonder whether if you would have used the OCAI tool designed by Quinn and Cameron you would have got the the hierarchy score high in the decision delegation by your workers? I know in your case it was a matter of observation and practise that lead you to that quick natural view that empowerment of managers - giving them more supportive freedom can make them more pro-active. Its a really good example of pro-active leadership. I always like to search for examples where leader actually tackles culture and then aligns with strategic goals. Your case I guess improved efficiency in decision making as well. On the other hand let us not forget that unlike prof. Hamel's visionary quest to free us from bureaucracy, that bureaucracy will exist because its embedded in our human culture. What your example clearly shows is that you sensed that you need to balance that bureaucracy in a way in which the level of decision making corresponds to the levels of tasks. Clearly managers at different positions in a highly technical SAP organisation were capable of making their own good decisions without the need to go up the level. However the problem with culture depends on the context - it could be argued that in a highly technological environment such steps are easier to take, as the level of tacit knowledge among staff is high and their understanding of strategy and operations in general are quite broad. In the manufacturing environment were there is a higher amount of less technical skills involved, longer hours of work, less work life balance and so on, trying to delegate power becomes more difficult. Motivation becomes harder because there are more cultural barriers to break not just delegating decision making but a whole packacge of iffs and don't and I know better.

Jonathan's story shows that it is more than just the boss that enables bureaucracy. We all have to be willing to be a boss, get things done, make decisions, and stop gift wrapping ourselves in red tape. We all have to get into motion, to be willing to try something new, something risky, something that is going to make a difference.

What's exciting about this approach to management is that you can start here, start now, and start with what you already have. And Jonathan shows that you can awaken enough people to get rolling so that you are all successful.

We have to do more than just want to go beyond bureaucracy. I think Jonathan’s story shows that it CAN happen anywhere – probably even where you are working. Shine your light on improving your own organization’s culture, because the culture we make, is the culture we get.

I

I wholeheartedly agree. As a strategist I often tell my teams that finding the right answer for clients is less than half the battle. The more formidable challenge is getting them to take action individually and, even harder, take collective action in the same direction.

Jonathan's premise around getting both scale and buy in by demanding them to make decisions, be willing to fail and giving people the room to try, fail and improve is the foundation of creating lasting change. It may not be quick but it is lasting.

Culture eats strategy for breakfast. But culture with strategy is a feast.

Dear Jonathan, I like the title of this story! Was it by any chance inspired by the famous Peter Drucker quote, 'Culture can eat strategy for breakfast'? You story comes to life with the testimonials of your team members.

Jonathan I was intrigued at your intuitive approaches and the risk-taking going on in the story regards

Tony

At that time, I was one of the members of that described group , and Jonathan indeed surprised some of us in our first meeting, both by exposing some hidden "secret cows" and also by removing most of the decision barriers that were blocking us to move faster.
Empowerment started and we had license to move ahead. Sometimes not perfect, but good enough and the reality is that employee satisfaction and stakeholder satisfaction increased significantly.

Talking about good enough, you may want to check some of his tips to new managers in
http://alignment.wordpress.com/2010/10/17/7-more-tips-for-new-managers

Thank you Jonathan and keep going!
Regards
JP

Thanks for this great story.

Being in charge of people an executive hears most of the time only success stories, and why something that does not look good looks better in a different context.

Admitting failure seems to many people a sure way to miss the next step in their career, and in many organizational cultures it is!

Great to see how the empowering behavior from a leader can release so much productive energy in his organization.

Just think about how much opportunity is eaten by culture.

Thanks for the story and a great topic indeed.
Think back to when you were a kid and your parents made every decision for you, sometimes even down to those ugly socks with the embarrassing patterns. When we grow older and join the workforce, for some, managers are like our parents, who we think will always make the right decisions for us. Well, if we go back to those embarrassing and ugly socks we wore when we were younger, then we realize that maybe we should be empowered to give our own input.
What about the child you see wearing the Superman costume to school when it is not Halloween. You know that his parents empowered him to be able to make his own decision, even if it looks a little funny. I bet those children are CEOs or entrepreneurs today.
Jonathan, I admire your decision of empowering people to make their own decisions and I am sure they have taken that change in culture with them forward from that experience.

Jonathan - Patti Fletcher suggested I read this post following a discussion about how to succeed at changing a culture. I'm pleased she did. You present the steps in a clear, simple and straightforward manner. See, decide, do, reinforce. Voila.

Having a team of people who work together to think through and make decisions, is the foundation for success of any strategy. So even if culture doesn't eat strategy, it certainly comes first.

Hope to read about you as the final winner while I'm enjoying a breakfast of culture and perusing the MIx.

Thank you for sharing this story, Jonathon! I've had the privelege be part of this transformation, and have witnessed firsthand the culture change that has revolutionized SAP Marketing. From 2005 to 2010 I worked with the Marketing organization to help represent them in the Employee Corporate Portal. We were never able to fully realize the presence for Marketing because of pending decisions and reorganizations that might "impact direction". Since then, there has been a 180 degree change. I now work in the Marketing organization and we are empowered to innovate, improve and create. The result of the culture change enables people to move faster, with confidence, to deliver the best results most efficiently. Thank you for driving these changes that have made SAP Marketing one of the best places to work!

Thank you for so clearly articulating an often overlooked and under-appreciated fact of corporate life: all strategy is designed and implemented by people. Whether they are operating within a highly structured, hierarchal organization, a global holding company arrangement or within a small partnership, it’s individual people, with their own personalities, talents, aspirations and fears who drive the business ahead. And it’s the collective culture of a company that determines how independent or hamstrung each employee feels and behaves. People make culture and culture defines the modes of operation.

Three examples jump out from my own experience that underscore these observations and illustrate how culture will always eat strategy. The first involved several years working with a large, global Japanese IT firm, in which all decision making was tightly bound by both outside cultural norms and inside rules of precedence, procedure and policy. Virtually no individual initiative existed. Every decision was delegate up, masked as a collective process.

The second involved the creation and implementation of a global business and marketing strategy led by a single, highly talented, mercurial individual who succeeded by brute force of will until meeting his Waterloo.

The last was living through two mergers between seemingly similar global marketing communications firms that took years of culture wars before developing a business model based on defined goals rather than personalities. There was no delegation up or down or across—only guerrilla warfare.

In each of these examples, culture ate strategy. People behaved in the manner their culture allowed, very often not to the benefit of a strategy or business. Success was either random, short-lived or not at all.

I am a longtime fan of Becher’s innovative work (along with Mark Yolton’s) in supporting SAP in staying agile. This is a must read for any executive who wants their organization to thrive in this increasingly disruptive world.

Supporting a self-organizing culture is more important than strategy, as Becher has proven – and explains here how other businesses can act similarly. It seems obvious to some, yet not all top management yetm that in a complex, connected world where there’s a war for top talent, the key to staying competitive is to recognize, support and reward employees for using their best talents together to solve problems and seize opportunities.

This approach accelerates just-in-time, shared learning, camaraderie and greater accomplishment together as individuals get better at recognizing the best collaboration methods and tools to use for the situation. Those experiences tend to make “our” work more meaningful so “we” becoming higher performing and happier.

That’s the secret to an engaged “workforce” in a social, disruptive world where the Law of Unintended Consequences is increasingly becoming the norm not the exception – so solving the thorny, often expensive “exceptions” that pop up at work becomes increasingly vital to the survival of an organization.

Like your article. Used it in my daily read today at leader-leader.org