Culture: A Double-Edged Sword
“Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” This quote by Peter Druker was referenced so frequently in my workplace, along with “culture is king,” that those concepts came to be the culture. In other words, culture became the reason for success in some regions and the scapegoat for failure in others. The culture was so protected that it became dysfunctional. Marker (2009) states,
It does seem that high-performing cultures tend to be those that are well aligned with their mission, vision, goals, and strategies as well as with existent environmental constraints. Hence, organizational cultures that are flexible and highly adaptive are likely to provide performance advantages in the current, fast-changing environment. (p. 729)
Our culture wasn’t flexible or adaptive, but rather it was protected at the risk of new strategies. The strategies came and went without reaching the organizational goals.
Jesper Sorensen’s proposal that “when environments are volatile – and most business environments today arguably match this description – and change is more constant or dramatic, then the benefits of a strong organizational culture may disappear,” helped me see how this played out in my workplace (as cited in Marker, 2009, p. 729). The organizational culture was created 100 years before and, in attempting to be relevant, they had implemented several drastic strategic changes in the last five years, resulting in an internal culture clash. Leadership began to use the word “transformation.”
In seeking transformational change, leadership implemented a couple of the elements outlined by Marker (2009), such as creating urgency and raising anxiety, but they failed to provide a strong vision or to find common ground or gain commitment going forward.
For a moment I thought a process such as Future Search would have provided the right outcome, but then I realized the organizational culture was one where only certain people were invited to the table. The culture relied heavily on a consultant-centered planning method and invited input from certain employees as a “reward” or “acknowledgment” of past performance. Leadership assembled teams and workgroups to map the organization and were transparent about restructuring. Lollie and Leigh (2009) recommend ensuring that “the strategic plan is aligned with the organization’s societal purpose” but the leadership failed to release a strategic plan or a compelling vision (p. 190). Culture, being stronger than strategy, stood fast against change.
What I learned, is that culture is a two-edged sword that can work for or against transformational change. Given the abstract vision and ill-defined task as well as the cultural inclination to invite people to the table as a reward for performance, rather than as relevant contributors, Future Search is likely to fail as a way of achieving transformational performance change for the new organizational strategies (Weisbord & Janoff, 2009, p. 103).
However, Future Search could be just the vehicle to make transformational change to the culture, which might be the only way to allow a new strategy to survive. Future Search could help by helping meeting participants recognize the former culture, agree to the culture that is needed to move forward, and take action to put that new culture in place.
Reference
Lollie, S., Leigh, H. (2009). Organizational structure. In R. Watkins & D. Leigh (Eds.) Handbook of improving performance in the workplace: The handbook of selecting and implementing performance interventions. (pp. 177-195). San Francisco, CA: Pfeiffer. https://boisestate.eblib.com/atron/FullRecord.aspx?p=468975
Marker, A. (2009). Organizational culture. In R. Watkins & D. Leigh (Eds.) Handbook of improving performance in the workplace: The handbook of selecting and implementing performance interventions. (pp. 725-744). San Francisco, CA: Pfeiffer. https://boisestate.eblib.com/atron/FullRecord.aspx?p=468975
Weisbord, M. & Janoff, S. (2009). Future Search. In R. Watkins & D. Leigh (Eds.) Handbook of improving performance in the workplace: The handbook of selecting and implementing performance interventions. (pp. 91-114). San Francisco, CA: Pfeiffer. https://boisestate.eblib.com/atron/FullRecord.aspx?p=468975
