HACKER Q&A
📣 georgestrakhov

Does culture really eat strategy for breakfast?


Everybody says it's all about culture. And there are lots of great anecdotal evidence. But has anyone studied the subject of corporate cultures properly? What is a corporate culture? How do you define it? Measure it? How do corporate cultures live and die? How do they endure the people and how do people endure them?

Obviously this is very hard to study scientifically. But people must have tried.

Please recommend what to read and study to understand better. Thanks.

  👤 al_borland Accepted Answer ✓
In my experience working in a company with a fractured culture with a lot of problems, the culture prevents any strategy from being effective. To me, this is why culture is important.

For example, while the culture used to value people who stuck around for decades, it now demands new people from the outside to generate “new ideas”. This means our strategy changes every 3 years. When the strategy changes every 3 years, a culture develops that ignores any strategic organization or technology changes, as they know it will just change again in a few years.

Once these cultures develop, even if a good long-term strategy is put in place, the people aren’t going to adopt it. It takes a lot of years to build that trust after it’s been lost.

So I guess both are needed, in concert, for a long period of time, to creat something good and meaningful.

👤 syndicatedjelly
No, culture does not eat strategy for breakfast.

1) Only living beings can be said to “eat”. Sometimes, the word “eat” can be used within a metaphor, such as “The garbage truck ate that man’s garbage.” But this generally is used when an inanimate object is somehow seen as “consuming “ another object. In the case of ideas, it does not make sense for an idea to consume another one. Thus, culture cannot eat anything.

2) Strategy cannot be “anything” for breakfast, let alone eaten. “To be had for breakfast” implies a state transition, at which time after breakfast, the object is in a new state. For example, a bunwich may be “had” over breakfast, after which, it moves to the state of “being digested” by the consumer. Strategy may be “discussed over” breakfast, but it’s state ultimately doesn’t change. Therefore, strategy cannot be “had” nor “eaten” over breakfast.

👤 jmount
Good culture probably also has good strategy.