Corporate Strategy Putting Culture on Diet

"Organisational culture eats strategy for breakfast."

Peter Drucker's idea of infusing culture before implementing an innovation strategy can easily be seen going down the drain among corporate giants.

The idea is that if innovation culture is infused within an organisation, it will not need an innovation strategy because the synergy will automatically be derived.

What did not get considered was the opposite. What happens if strategy takes over culture?

Strategy essentially comes from a top-down approach, which is top management enforcing their (or consultant's) views across the organisation. There is no involvement of the on-ground employees, who can actually empower this agenda. This is where culture should come in. But too much focus on strategy does not leave space for employees to move around much, and this makes innovation just another task for them.

To infuse a culture of innovation, a bottom-up approach is required. Owing to a highly specific and defined strategy, a corporate fails to become agile, because now everyone wants it follow the strategy. This is probably the reason why startups are thriving more in this tech driven world, they have culture more then strategy. They want to go out and get it done.

Culture is starving in corporates, and it needs to eat before it drains out of every last bit of energy. There are definitely ways to do it.

Will discuss this further.

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