Why Culture eats Strategy for Breakfast

Within the world of business and fast-moving companies, there is one mantra that rings true for all of them “culture eats strategy for breakfast”. Mark Fields, the former CEO of Ford, realized in 2006 already that culture is more important than strategy. His reasoning revolved around the customer and the fact that the modern organization should be agile and adaptive to the ever-changing needs and desires of its customer. This does not mean that Fields believed strategy to be unimportant, but it means that it does not matter how good your business strategy is, it will fail without a company culture that encourages and empowers your people to implement it (read more here). In other words, according to another great thinker; “Power to the People!” (John Lennon, 1971).

Freedom and Autonomy

Although it is strange to find CEOs and political peace activists to be of the same opinion, there is a truth in what they believe. But what does this mean in reality? According to me, that means that, over time, we have got more freedom and autonomy to make decisions, in our personal and professional lives – which is for the better. Globalization and the internet have opened a window of choice and opportunity. This has naturally only been enhanced by free market forces in our everyday personal lives, but also in our professional lives. The entrance of a new, generally higher educated, workforce in the market and the flattening out of traditional hierarchies within organizations over time, has propelled the advance of professional positions with more decision-making power. A company used to have one or a few bosses who called all the shots. Rigid hierarchical systems made for narrow and isolated decision-making processes, causing all kinds of problems from obvious biases, tunnel vision, and even blatant arrogance or naivety. More and more decisions are being made outside the board rooms and C-level suites.

Just think about the number of vacancies that have included some sort of requirement related to decision-making, e.g.: “excellent decision-making skills”, “ability to make sound and effective decisions”, “proven track record of effective decision-making”, and “excellent problem-solving skills”. All these requirements show some form of autonomy and decision-making power that is included in the position. More evidence can be found in the tech industry which is often a frontrunner for economic and societal trends nowadays. Within the software industry, we see a lot of these similar ideas and terms. Terms like “hive-mind decision-making” and “mob programming” indicate a similar trend and a better understanding of democratic decision-making.

Culture, Decision-making & Empowerment

So, you might wonder, how are culture and decision-making related? Simple. Empowerment is the bridge between culture and decision-making. Once you empower your employees to make their own decisions, they will need some sort of guide to lean back on. A guide that will help them to make decisions related to setting goals, making priorities, scheduling, time management etcetera. In other words, they need a sort of guiding set of principles that help them motivate and prioritize decisions. Do you feel where I am going with this? Exactly, they need a culture that helps them in their everyday work life. A good culture means that people can take more decentralized decisions. They are not reliant on leaders to show them how to act, prioritize or behave in relation to their work. This means that your organization becomes more agile and resilient as leaders can be busy or absent. Less dependency also means that it is easier for your organization to exchange actors if need be. Think about your company as a sports team. It is easy to exchange players from your team if the overarching system works and if the team spirit is good. Individual players know what to do (overarching structure) and how to do it (team spirit).

The strong case for a competent culture to create a resilient and adaptive organization does not exclude the fact that a good strategy is needed to achieve the goals of the business. That is also not the original point that Fields made. His point was that, if you must prioritize your time, your first priority should be your culture and your second priority should be your strategy. A company with a bad strategy but good culture might succeed because empowered individuals can overcome the lack of structure through their individual decisions. But a company with a good strategy and bad culture will almost definitely fail as the unempowered employees will or cannot implement the strategy in practice. That is the key difference. That is why culture eats strategy for breakfast if you want to create a sustainable business.  

Read more about how culture eats strategy for breakfast and how we can use culture as an organizational tool here.  

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‍We are releasing a new update with more dates for our spring events. Register as soon as possible, as spaces can quickly fill up.

Inspiration After Work (24 April)

Line Thomson (Peops Relations) and Cecilia Hållner (People Value) will host an interactive round-table discussion on current HR topics. Our speakers will introduce the topic and then moderate the discussions. The goal is for you to take away new insights that you can utilize at your workplace.

Registration is made through this link - or via email to Calle@peopsrelations.se

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Attracting Competence (22 May)

Our view of work is continuously changing, which also means that our view on rewards is constantly changing. If you want to find out what is important and how people want to be rewarded for their work, then you should not miss this seminar!

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Peops Relations Celebrates 5 Years! Join us as we celebrate five successful years together! We´ll invite you personally to this event, stay tuned!

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All events will be held at the Rådhuset in Uppsala. Hope to see you there!

First impressions matter. So being aware of the first impression of a new employee in your company is crucial to his or her future performance. That’s why in this blog I’m taking a closer look at onboarding.

Onboarding somebody into your company is a lot like welcoming somebody into your house. As with all welcomes, it is not just a first coffee and a short introductory chat. It is a continuous demonstration of cooperation and affection. A good onboarding process is paramount for the productivity of your employee and his or her integration with the team. It encompasses everything from the first small introduction over a cup of coffee until the more formal monthly one-to-one meetings. In this blog I will give some practical advice on how you can improve your onboarding process and the integration and engagement of your new employees. If you’re thinking: “well most of this doesn’t apply to us because the COVID-19 crisis is forcing us to work remotely”, think again. Onboarding is now more important than ever to create a well-functioning team, you just need to rethink your structures in a digital matter. More tips on that here.

Handbooks and more

Let’s get the boring stuff out of the way first. As a part of any onboarding process, there are a lot of practical matters and questions that your newly hired employee has. Handbooks are a great way for employees to peacefully read through and find an answer for their questions, in the first turbulent weeks of a new employment. In the same line, make sure that the handbook has a FAQ as well, where the employee can find the most frequently asked questions, just to make it a bit easier for him or her.

It does not all have to be dull practical stuff, however. You can also include more interesting things in your handbook such as:

• A formulated version of your vision, mission, strategy, culture and values.
• An overview of your team members, including pictures, practical information and fun facts.
• An overview of your customers/clients and stakeholders, and a short summary on each and every one of them.  

Meeting the team(s)

If you want to feel at home, you need to know who are living in the house. It is therefore important to have meetings with the different teams. Now this is where things become a bit difficult to define. As companies differ in size, it becomes more difficult for them to involve everybody in the process. Meeting the team is a process that starts off large, with a lot of people involved, and is narrowed down over time.

Normally the process looks like this:

1. A (digital) announcement of the new employee, who he or she is and what he or she will be doing, for the entire company.
2. A short (digital) introduction of the employee to the entire company (or a larger part of the company).
3. A more thorough introduction with colleagues from different departments with whom the employee will work closely with.
4. A meeting with representatives from the HR, Legal, and Facilities/IT departments.
5. A meeting with the closest colleagues of the employee (or the entire department). Hold this meeting off-site, perhaps as a lunch meeting or afternoon coffee so that the team can really spend some quality time to get to know the employee.
6. One-to-one meetings with the manager.
   

Introduction and training

After you’re done with shaking hands, just like at home, it is time to take a coffee and sit down to talk about some more serious stuff. In this sense I am talking about more thorough introductions on what the company does and how they do things, what they stand for and how they communicate this. Employer branding is a big topic in these introductions and trainings. You need to give the newly hired employee a good idea of what your brand represents and how this translates in his or her activities.

This is also the moment when an employee gets their first introduction to the internal systems, ways of working and contact persons, including possible clients. In this sense it is good to have a training set up from a more senior employee or somebody from the IT department to make sure that the new employee can work with the systems you use. Client or stakeholder meetings are also a big part of the process. A senior employee should take the new employee with him to introductory meetings with the potential clients and stakeholders so they get an image of who you are working for/with.

Another part of this process are job-specific trainings which can be ongoing, but which get introduced in the onboarding process.

Feedback

So now that you have bombarded your newly hired employee with as much information as you possibly can, it is time to harvest some information as well. This means: one-to-one meetings with feedback. These are often meetings between the newly hired employee and his or her manager, where both parties can give feedback to one another. These meetings should be held regularly and continuously throughout the career of your employees over at your company. Try to have such a meeting roughly every month with your employees, even their first month. Of course, everything is still fun and games then, so there will not be that much feedback coming from your employee but try to challenge them even then already. Is there really nothing that the company can improve? How was the first impression? Was it well enough? Is there anything that should be improved? Remember, the image that the company gives of to its own employees often also translate into the same image that they give off to clients and stakeholders.

In conclusion

A good onboarding process is everything from the first handbook until formal meetings with clients and stakeholders. It is a large process which, if done correctly, can kickstart the career of your new employee within your company. In this blog we have given a brief overview of all the essentials. If you want to have a more detailed roadmap of what a good onboarding process looks like, click here.

If you need help setting up your onboarding process, just reach out to us and we'll set up a meeting to see what we can do for you!

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