Culture is stronger than strategy
If strategy is to maintain and improve then perhaps the current culture can be of great help.
When strategy requires changes in behavior then culture eats up strategy for breakfast.
What kind of culture do we need for fast change, which in most cases disrupts the environment? A culture that generates change and that feels uncomfortable when it does not change.
If this is true then the principal work of management would be to prioritize those changes proposed by people or groups and give them the necessary resources and time. That is to say to sponsor the most beneficial changes in order to make the strategy a reality. It is question of leadering the change which is generated by the culture, of riding the ball of energy instead of getting caught up in web of silent resistance.
This culture would have at least two capacities.
- The capacity to be appreciative, to see the best of what is: the strengths to which we have access, the opportunities, the resources, the potential…. all that which we have available to execute and this abundance generates ambition.
- The capacity to create processes which mobilize simultaneously a large number of people and which permits that each person does what he or she should because that is what they want to do. In this fashion we generate collective action which is the only way to rapidly change culture. All the rest is theoretical.
