Culture Clash

Of all the components that need to be aligned with strategy, organizational culture can be particularly challenging. Formal systems and processes can be documented, assessed and measured. Informal systems and processes – elements of organizational culture – tend to be unwritten, hidden and difficult to articulate.

Organizational culture can be described as the assumptions, values, and expectations shared by the organization’s members. When effectively aligned with strategy and other components, culture can motivate employees and make it easier to execute a strategy. When misaligned – when unstated assumptions about priorities and processes are at odds with the officially stated ones – culture can feed resistance to change and get in the way of strategy.

For example, if a company’s strategy calls for sharing information across the organization but the culture is based on managers using their own judgement independently, that culture may make the strategy difficult to execute.