Culture: Radically Altering Strategy and Culture

Many organizations face serious crises as they move along their development paths. When crisis threatens the organization’s very survival, drastic action is needed. The only option at this point is to radically alter strategy and culture, but too much or too little change will destroy the organization. The ability to make effective decisions about what to change and how to change during a crisis is the quality that separates the New Age executives from the rest. You will have to decide how much you can change the company’s strategy and culture, and then match your decision against the New Age executives. The skills of insight, versatility, and focus are extremely important here.

Evolution: Fine-Turning Strategy and Culture

When you examine formally excellent organizations in changing environments, you see living, throbbing, changing, growing creatures constantly evolving to insure their survival. As a firm’s vision and strategies evolve, culture must adapt as well, but only within certain bounds. Can you reasonably expect a benevolent service firm to transform it into a manufacturing giant? Can engineers become marketers? Perennially excellent organizations feed off common purpose, satisfied customers, distinctive competence at delivering products and services, dominance over competitors, and consistency in hiring and keeping good people-but they must constantly withstand the threads of a changing environment. Strategy must assume a reinforcing role to bolster the culture and adapt it to the changing environment.

Growth: Holding Strategy and Culture

Growth often brings innovative strategies that may demand a new culture. Any growth-oriented organization bent on launching a brilliant new strategy needs to carefully weigh the consequences for its culture. If management cannot commit the time and money to develop the new culture or adapt the old one, it should reconsider its goals. Many will present a difficult situation facing the professional service firm, and you should decide the best course of action and then evaluate your decisions. And thus you will see the integrative skills (vision and patience) in action.

Evolution: Fine-Turning Strategy and Culture

When you examine formally excellent organizations in changing environments, you see living, throbbing, changing, growing creatures constantly evolving to insure their survival. As a firm’s vision and strategies evolve, culture must adapt as well, but only within certain bounds. Can you reasonably expect a benevolent service firm to transform it into a manufacturing giant? Can engineers become marketers? Perennially excellent organizations feed off common purpose, satisfied customers, distinctive competence at delivering products and services, dominance over competitors, and consistency in hiring and keeping good people-but they must constantly withstand the threads of a changing environment. Strategy must assume a reinforcing role to bolster the culture and adapt it to the changing environment.