Breakfast of Champions

A good strategy is nothing without a good culture. Companies that maintain a culture of diminishing people, putting them down, institutionalizing sexism or harassment, or protecting abusers, are always going to go down in flames if they do not change. I don’t care how good your strategy is, if your culture isn’t right it will get you every time.

From this month’s excellent Harvard Business Review cover story, The Leader’s Guide to Corporate Culture: “Strategy and culture are among the primary levers at top leaders’ disposal in their never-ending quest to maintain organizational viability and effectiveness. Strategy offers a formal logic for the company’s goals and orients people around them. Culture expresses goals through values and beliefs and guides activity through shared assumptions and group norms.”