Culture eats strategy for breakfast. What does this mean within a company and why does culture beat strategy every time? The phrase originated with Peter Drucker, an American-Austrian management consultant, but was made famous by Mark Fields, the former Ford CEO. What it means is where company strategy and its internal culture don’t align, culture will always win no matter what management implement. So, if you suspect there’s a disjunction between strategy and culture, how do you confirm it? And then what can you do to align a company’s prevailing culture with it’s chosen strategy?

What is the Culture of a Company?

In a business environment, culture refers to the shared values, beliefs, behaviours, and norms that shape how people interact, make decisions, and approach work within an organisation. It’s the invisible ways of working that influences everything from leadership style and communication to employee engagement and customer relationships.

Culture is more than atmosphere, it affects how trust is built, how compliance is interpreted, and how partnerships flourish. In the HR and recruitment space, culture isn’t just a backdrop – it’s a strategic lever.

Factors that Influence Company Culture

1. Leadership: The philosophy, behaviour, attitudes and priorities of management set an example for company employees to follow (e.g. whether leadership is hierarchical or participatory).
2. Organisational values: What the company stands for (e.g., innovation, integrity, collaboration).
3. Behavioural norms: How people are expected to act (e.g., punctuality, dress code, communication style).
4. Office Design: Layout, décor and facilities and infrastructure create a sense of “place” that can “set the tone” and either encourage or discourage behaviours and attitudes.
5. Employee Recognition: How, when and why employees are recognised affects morale and assists in establishing a positive or negative work environment.
6. History and Traditions: Celebrations, language, and even how meetings are run shape current culture as they can set and reinforce tone and expectations.

Your People are a Reflection of Your Business

These factors suggest that a company’s culture is not defined by slogans or policies such as a company’s mission, vision, values or management’s strategy. It is defined by the everyday actions and decisions of its employees.

Why do Company Culture and Strategic Plans Need to Align?

Culture provides the energy that results in behaviours which are needed to bring a strategy to life. As a result, there are several consequences when company culture and company strategy are misaligned. The biggest is reduced productivity. This is because, a company that doesn’t have an aligned culture and strategy will battle to achieve goals. Furthermore, company employees are likely to feel increasingly disconnected and demotivated while working.

Conversely companies with a good organisational culture that aligns well to their strategic plan have been shown to have a competitive edge. This is because a shared purpose leads to better and more coordinated decision making which also results in increased productivity.

To evaluate if your company’s culture and strategic plans are aligned, you first need to determine what your real company culture is. Then you need to assess your company’s existing strategic plan. Once you’ve done this, you’ll have the information needed to measure what the gap between company culture and strategy is.

How to Determine What a Company’s Culture is?

What is the current company culture? Actual company culture is different from defining the current culture as you may not be aware of what is actually going on. What do people really believe about the workplace and what actually goes on day to day? Are there underlying fears or a lack of buy in? There may be uncovered gems of employees, working harder than you could ever imagine and not being recognised. Alternatively, there may be some employees who are not on the right track.

There are two groups of people who are most likely to want to assess what a company’s culture is. The first is a company’s current management and the second are prospective employees.

How a Company can Assess their Culture

For a company to assess their own culture they need to conduct employee surveys, hold focus groups and interview individual employees. It is highly recommended that management procure the services of a professional to assess, outline and implement a plan to achieve cultural re-alignment. Employees partaking in this research need to represent a cross section of staff and not only come from one level. In other words, everyone from the company’s cleaners to the CEO needs to participate. Culture is strongly impacted by symbols, rituals, stories and interactions therefore these need to be noted in order to understand unspoken norms and values. Finally, HR related data needs to be analysed. For example, KPIs, performance assessment processes, historical employee retention rates, absenteeism, promotion and bonuses as well as overall productivity so that improvement markers at 12, 18, 24 and 36 months can be measured.

How a Job Seeker can Assess a Company’s Culture

Job seekers who want to determine what a company’s culture is can do this by researching the company’s online presence. It’s also good to network with current and past employees and if possible, observe the work environment. For example, the office layout and the body language of employees as they interact with each other. Finally, an interview is an excellent opportunity to ask questions to assess if the company’s core values align with observations and research.

Once you’ve discovered what the company culture really is, you might also discover that it’s incredibly healthy. Which is heartening. However, a healthy company culture can still be very misaligned to its strategy plan. If the company’s culture and strategic plan don’t align, it would be advantageous that the company get some external help to facilitate better alignment of culture and strategy.

What is Company Strategy?

Companies define their goals and then, ideally, have a longer-term high-level plan outlining how they wish to achieve them. This is the company’s strategy or strategic plan. It’s essentially a road map designed to guide management so that decisions across a company are coordinated and focused on the company’s overall vision and objectives. Accordingly, a company’s strategy is important because it determines how objectives and goals are achieved. Which also means that a company’s strategic plan is an important part of enacting and sustaining a company’s chosen values. When this is done successfully, a strategic plan can augment a company’s competitive advantages.

What is the strategy that your company is currently outworking? Is it effective? Does it need some revisiting? To investigate a company’s strategy, you need to ask some tough questions about the performance and effect of the current plan of the people. Are the right people being recruited and are people playing in position? Are the goals achievable? Are the goals clearly defined? Are there multiple ways to achieve the same end or is the path quite well defined?

3 Steps to Assess a Company’s Strategy

1. Define the strategic context by looking at the company’s mission (purpose), vision and core principles.
2. Conduct a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats) analysis. Base it on evaluations of the external opportunities and threats to the company as well as the company’s internal strengths and weaknesses.
3. Determine if the company’s existing strategy is realistic to implement and seeks to build a sustainable competitive advantage. To do this one needs to assess how well the strategy fits its existing market place and if it has the resources to implement it (is it realistic?).

Design and Implement a Plan to Close the Gap

Once the current culture has been assessed and the current strategy has been investigated you can see how they align. If they do… amazing! Well done. If they don’t then it’s time to do some work and to keep asking questions. The powerful thing about staying flexible and continuing to ask questions is that there is space for learning and improvement. This is exciting because if you can define a preferred future for the company, then you can figure out how to make it a reality! This might mean hiring new people, or changing the job descriptions of the people already in the team. During your quest to better align company culture and strategy, remain open to ideas and the opportunities that come through making changes.

5 Steps to Achieve Alignment of Company Culture and Strategic Planning

1. Define values and behaviours that are needed to achieve the company’s strategic goals.
2. Ensure that management leads by example, embodying the behaviours they expect from staff.
3. Communicate consistently and transparently. To ensure buy-in from employees they need to understand the big “why” behind decisions and how they contribute towards the bigger picture.
4. Integrate culture values into the company’s systems so that they are a tangible part of daily operations. For example, hiring processes, performance assessments and reward schemes.
5. Measure, monitor and adapt. Alignment is an ongoing HR project and not a once off exercise. It requires regular assessment and proactive adjustments to ensure that no gap creeps in and grows between culture and strategy.

The Key Recruitment Group has over 45-years of experience in recruitment. If we can assist in providing you with world class recruitment services, Contact Us today. Let’s start discussing how we can help your company to flourish with top talent.