There’s an old saying in business that culture eats strategy for lunch.  The first time I heard that was in the ’90s.  While I’d like to say that was “so last century”, it’s starting to feel more important now than ever before.  And that might be because I have so much more experience now with what it means.  

 

Patrick Lencioni describes two types of culture in his book, The Advantage.  In his book, he explains that organizations need to be smart and healthy in order to thrive.  Smart organizations are great at the work they do.  These organizations can tell you all about the tasks.  They know exactly how to create widgets or the equivalent to widgets.  They are in business because there are plenty of customers that want to purchase their widgets.  But that just speaks to being in the game, or survival.  

 

Healthy cultures are critical to thriving.  Healthy cultures focus on relationships.  Lencioni talks about these organizations as places where healthy disagreements and constructive conflict are part of the culture.  Sometimes describing what it looks or feels like is difficult.  When I ask clients to describe the components of a healthy culture, the answers are slow to appear.  But describing what it feels like to work somewhere that is not healthy is not nearly as difficult.  Unhealthy cultures are marked by signs of low trust, high levels of blame, hyper-rivalry, sarcasm, and cynicism.  People tend to describe these environments as toxic.  I imagine that most people have experienced toxic environments at one time or another.  And here is why it matters.

 

Lencioni says that you can be smart (good at what you do) but not necessarily healthy.  Odds are good that if you are really smart you will survive.  But if you’re also doing that smart work inside of an environment that is healthy, the odds greatly improve in favor of sustainable growth.  That’s because healthy organizations become smarter simply due to everyone’s increased willingness to engage, collaborate, and find constructive solutions to the inevitable challenges that arise every day in every organization.  In other words, people want to be there.  When people want to be part of an organization, is when a smart strategy thrives.  It’s the pre-requisite for having committed employees that are connected to the organization’s purpose for being in business.  

 

Hopefully you’re asking yourself, “How does one develop this healthy culture you speak of Mike?”  That’s a great question!  And since I’ve come to the end of this conversation, I will be sure to answer that question in the next installment of a Great Conversation.