Culture & Strategy
After participating in an engaging strategic planning session in early November 2022 with the amazing team at Resonance Inc., I took time to reflect on what the experience meant for me as a team member and as an experienced human resources professional. As I was already preparing materials on the importance of understanding an organization’s culture, the topic was top-of-mind as I considered the outcomes of our strategic planning exercise and how Resonance Inc.’s culture influenced the decisions that were made.
Strategic planning is a vital organizational exercise. Regular planning, ideally aligned with the organization’s mission, vision, and values, is necessary to ensure a thriving business. But strategic planning cannot occur in a vacuum. A keen understanding of the organization’s existing culture, and how to address change in the face of that culture, is just as important to the success of your business as ensuring your goals are “SMART”. In fact, many of you are likely familiar with the phrase “culture eats strategy for breakfast”, which has been (incorrectly) attributed to Peter Drucker.
An organization’s culture, or “the way things are done around here”, are the norms, values, and expectations of the work environment that are established by the people who work there. Culture is the accumulated shared learning of that group which is then taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think, feel, and behave in the workplace. These beliefs, values, and behavioural norms are eventually taken for granted and drop out of conscious awareness but persist in the environment as its culture.
“Culture is one of those intangibles that is hard to define but needs to be designed and implemented – and never by default.” (Jacob Engel, Forbes, Nov 20, 2018).
In 1991, O’Reilly et al. proposed an organizational cultural profile outlining seven different organizational cultures: innovative, aggressive, outcome-oriented, stable, people-oriented, team-oriented, and detail-oriented. For example, innovative cultures are those that are flexible, adaptable, and encourage experimentation with new ideas. These companies tend to have a flat hierarchy, where titles and other status distinctions may not be prevalent. In one such organization, employees are encouraged to take risks and are allowed to devote 20% of their work time to their own projects.
An organization can spend as much time on strategic planning as it wants but if the organization’s culture doesn’t support the strategy, realizing upon those goals could be very challenging. As noted above, “culture eats strategy for breakfast”.
Resonance Inc.’s vision is to “transform workplaces” and our strategic goals were purposefully designed to support our culture. By understanding how to define, design, or change your organization’s culture, Resonance Inc. can help your team reach its goals.