Culture is the operating system that strategy runs on
Strategy and Culture are simultaneously reinforcing…or defeating
By Katie Hayes, Founder, TerraVia Advisors
A leadership team can agree on a strategy and still struggle to execute it.
The priorities are clear. The presentation is compelling. People understand the ambition. Yet decisions move slowly, teams protect their own interests, and difficult issues surface too late.
When this happens, leaders often look for a better communication plan or stronger accountability.
Sometimes the more useful question is: what is the organization teaching people to do?
Culture shows up in everyday decisions
Culture is expressed through what happens when priorities compete, a mistake occurs, or someone challenges a senior leader.
Can people raise a concern before they have a solution? Do teams share information that might weaken their own position? Does a decision stay made? Are leaders rewarded for enterprise outcomes or primarily for the performance of their own function?
People pay attention to those signals. Over time, they learn how to succeed within the organization.
That is why I think of culture as the operating system that strategy runs on. It shapes how people interpret priorities and act when no one is giving them explicit instructions.
Look at the systems reinforcing the behavior
Consider a business that wants greater collaboration but sets goals and rewards almost entirely at the individual or functional level.
Or an organization that wants faster decisions while requiring multiple approvals for routine work.
Or a leadership team that encourages candor but becomes defensive when someone brings unwelcome information.
In each case, the organization is sending competing messages. People must decide which message carries more weight. Usually, they follow the one with consequences.
Changing that pattern requires leaders to examine the structures, incentives, routines, and personal behaviors that reinforce it.
Begin with the strategy
A useful culture conversation starts with what the business needs to achieve.
Which behaviors will make that strategy more likely to succeed? Where are those behaviors already present? What makes them difficult elsewhere?
If innovation matters, examine how leaders respond to experiments that fail. If customer responsiveness matters, examine who has authority to act. If integration matters, examine whether goals and decision processes encourage teams to work across boundaries.
This makes culture specific enough to influence.
Leaders carry the responsibility
HR can help leaders diagnose patterns, design supporting practices, and measure progress. The leadership team determines much of the daily experience through its choices.
What leaders ask about becomes important. What they tolerate becomes permissible. What they reward becomes repeatable.
A values statement may describe the aspiration. Leadership behavior tells people how seriously to take it.
A practical place to start
Choose one strategic priority and ask your leadership team:
· What do people need to do differently for this priority to succeed?
· Where are our current practices making that behavior difficult?
· What are we, as leaders, doing that reinforces the existing pattern?
· What is one change we can make and review over the next 90 days?
The aim is to make the organization more coherent: to bring what leaders say, what systems encourage, and what people experience into closer alignment.
When those elements support one another, people can spend more of their energy delivering the strategy.
TerraVia Advisors helps leaders connect strategy, leadership, and the systems that turn intent into performance.
