Culture plays a vital role in deciding how strategy is developed, communicated, and implemented in any organization. These are some ways that culture shapes strategy:
Value & Goal Alignment: A strong culture can ensure that employee values, beliefs, and behaviors are aligned around accomplishing strategic goals. When employee culture is aligned to strategy, it is easier for employees to own a new program or change and contribute to the change.
Decision Making Processes: Culture can impact how decisions are made. For example, in a collaborative culture decisions may be made by consensus with involvement of many individuals. This will impact how quickly the strategy is implemented and what is involved. Alternatively, in a culture that has more of a hierarchy the decisions will most likely be made at the top, impacting the speed and the process for implementation.
Risk Tolerance and Innovation: The culture of an organization will also impact an organization in how it deals with risk and innovation. A culture that creates a safe and supportive environment for experimentation and learning from mistakes will create a culture that supports risk and innovation for the purpose of strategy. Conversely, in an organization with risk-averse culture, strategies designed to change will occur due to the culture.
Employee Engagement and Execution: An aligned and favorable culture will help remedy the volatility in morale and engagement in employees required to successfully execute on strategy. When employees feel a sense of ownership to, and are engaged in, the strategic vision they are more likely to want to take action to implement the strategy in the organization.