Items tagged "Strategy":
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Culture Trumps Strategy, Every Time
The title says it all…
Whether you read Nilofer Merchant’s article or not, I think the title offers us a golden nugget of advice. What truly impacts your ability to execute a strategy with success?
Unfortunately, many strategic planning processes in the world today are more likely to be intellectual exercises to develop neat ideas on a piece of paper.
I’ve come to believe that strategic thinking and strategy development are vital to an organizations success. Strategic planning, in the traditional sense, is not so helpful.
What I’ve found is that strategic plans have the greatest impact if the process to develop it and the process to monitor it raise the ability of the group to question assumption; strengthens the groups ability to identify and manage unsolvable problems; and strengthens communication between members of the organization, while creating a coherent plan to guide the work.
I think Gary Hamel said it best, “The real leverage is not in creating the ‘right strategy’ but in increasing a [leader’s] capability to surface and test the assumptions behind the strategies they advocate.”
Here is a juicy tidbit from Merchant’s article that highlights the impact to this elusive and mysterious thing called “culture:”
Do We Trust Each Other?…A team I was recently working with reminded me of 6-year-olds playing soccer, where every team member simply surrounds the issue much like a team of kids surrounds the ball. They then travel en masse, afraid to move away from the proverbial “ball.” In this culture, no one owns a position on the field. This “we’re all in it together” cultural norm is certainly egalitarian, but it doesn’t support specialization, scale, or accountability. I worry that as this team grows, and when they’re not all in the same room, they will fail. When they are huddling, what they are signaling is that they don’t know how to trust one another to do their unique part. They — like many teams — simply don’t know how to “let go” to and with others, thus risking their ability to scale results.
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- posted by:
- patrickod-blog
- date:
- Mar 28, 2011 (a Monday)
- time:
- 3:23:00 (1 year ago)
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