Culture ts Strategy for Breakfast Quote by Drucker - Coursework Example

Culture Еаts Strategy for Brеаkfаst Student’s Name Instructor’s Name Course Code and Name University Date of Submission Culture Еаts Strategy for Breakfast Culture eats strategy for breakfast is a quote attributed to Drucker, which was significantly made popular by the president of Ford Motors, Mark Fields, in 2006. Drucker was very aware and convinced that no matter how brilliant his strategy was or how his vision was far-reaching, neither could be accomplished without the availability of a supportive and suitable organizational culture. In addition, he perceived culture as a critical role of leadership, and also believed that organizational culture can easily be changed (Kono 1994, p. 87). Mark Fields was so obsessed with this slogan, which even made him prioritize the change of organizational culture as a key strategic tool for enhancing the organization’s competitive advantage. In doing so, he focused on replacing the culture of bitterness, fear as a sense of betrayal and distrust with one of innovation, creativity, as well as a sense of responsibility among all the organization members. For him to actualize this, he planned a lay off 30,000 staff members, who were to be replaced with new ones to enhance introduction of a new culture. Indeed, the Field’s lesson from the Drucker’s quotation was clear - that no matter how brilliant his strategy was or how his vision was far-reaching, neither could be accomplished without the availability of a supportive and suitable organizational culture (Scholz 1995, p. 533). Organizational culture represents the organizational values a corporation adopts, which dictates the manner in which it interact with employees, clients, partners, and vendors. On the other hand, strategy is about shaping the organization’s future. It is a game plan of the best way to move from means to ends. Owing to the fact that the organizational culture is the driving force of how a company operates, it has a great impact in the development and implementation of a business strategy (Schwartz & Davis 1998, p. 33). Factually, any organization across all industries has got a personality. For instance, it could be unconventional, laid-back, high-energy, or quality-obsessed. Whatever the company’s culture, the effective strategies requires the organizational members or workforce to embrace its vision. This significantly means that the organizational culture should always match the designed business strategy, whereby the employees would be increasingly enthusiastic in carrying out the tasks required by the strategy. Worth noting, any kind of mismatch can significantly ruin the strategy implementation, as well as the organizational performance in the long run (Scholz 1997, p. 83). Thus, if there is any mismatch between the two, it is highly critical for the company to adjust either the strategy or culture. In addition, organizational culture includes the shared organizational norms, values and beliefs. It usually sets the foundation of the business strategy in any organization. Actually, for a business strategy to be developed and implemented effectively, it must be fully aligned with the organizational culture. Therefore, goals and initiatives should be established by an organization to establish and support the organizational culture that is potential of embracing an organization’s strategy in the long term (Kono 1994, p. 91). Essentially, regardless of the nature of the industry within which an organization operates, organizational culture is considered to be eight times more powerful and influential towards performance reports as compared to a business strategy. For instance, regardless of the size of a hospital, not the superstar or highly competent physicians, or electronic systems of medical records that would make the hospital develop in the long run, but the organization culture. Most importantly, organizational culture has a great effect to the extent that if culture and strategy are not significantly aligned, culture will act like a competitor (Gupta 2011, p. 521). For instance, global companies such as Anderson, Enron, and Arthur were kicked out of business by their unsuitable organizational culture, but not their competitors. Culture eats strategy for breakfast, they say. However, why is it that in very many organizations, strategies breathe easily without the fear of being eaten for tea and breakfast? The main reason is because of the fact that strategies are apparently more tangible and highly linked to performance. In turn, performance is ultimately converted into financial terms in the economy. With the example of the Enron collapse, the Enron collapse analysis point out that the collapse was significantly contributed by financial and cultural failures. However, the key question is - why is culture very powerful? Literally, it is highly obvious that strategies can fail or succeed because of individuals. Therefore, organizations require tapping into people’s talents motivation and potential. Essentially, when people are customer focused, consistently engaged and ready to move forward, they would consequently be ready to promote a new strategic direction. Great strategies can easily be resisted by strong organizational cultures (Scholz 1995, p. 534). Therefore, an organizational culture can be regarded as a powerful monster that significantly resist and counteract ant attempts to change, regardless of how effective the business strategy is. This is mainly because of the fact that culture is the lubricant that makes the organization’s value creation engine turn without friction. Although the notion is that culture usually eats strategy for breakfast, both organizational culture and business strategy should significantly eat breakfast together. This is mainly because of the fact that they are both essential for the business success. Notably, while culture is critical and inevitable within any organization, it is a business strategy that will significantly harness the potential of a firm’s resources, as well as its competitiveness. However, both culture and strategy are equally important (Schwartz & Davis 1998, p. 39). Although there are some studies that have significantly claimed that organization culture matters more that the business strategy, this is a mistaken and ineffective claim that can considerably weaken a firm’s competitive advantage. In addition, there are numerous organizational leaders that usually separate strategy and culture as though they can work separately without one depending on the other in the long term. More too, even many managerial consultants do not seem to know how to enhance culture and strategy work together. This is a big mistake that can harm an organizational survival and performance in the long run (Gupta 2011, p. 523). Indeed, there should be substantial relations between the nature of an organizational culture and the value of a business strategy. Worth noting, culture is mostly about behaviours and personality of a work group or team. It is the numerous different ways that foretell the manner in which a group of organizational members are probable to do next. Thus, it is the flavour, the manner, the norms, the traditions, as well as the attitudes that differentiate one group of people from another. In addition, it is can be considered as means and ends. Furthermore, culture can shape the type of business strategy that emerges, but is not a strategy by itself. On the other hand, strategy can significantly shape the type of culture that develops, but it is not a culture by itself. However, the difference between the 2 reflects that they both equally matter to the potential success and survival of an organizational group over the short and long term (Schwartz & Davis 1998, p. 45-46). To use of examples, if a business strategy focuses on offering a high quality customer service in order to increase sales growth, the organizational culture should significantly value people, and more particularly, the customers. Secondly, if a business strategy involves business growth and expansion, this means that the company culture should significantly embrace new challenges and change. Thirdly, if the business strategy entails providing the best quality so as to gain reputation and gain increased market share, then an organizational culture that give meticulous attention to details is essential. Fourthly, if the business strategy is to take swift advantage of emerging opportunities, this requires a culture that consistently encourages new unique ways and ideas of doing things, as well as adaptable workforce (Kono 1994, p. 96). Lastly, although it is said much often that the business of business is business, not all organizational cultures support increased profitability as a strategic goal. In this regard, an organizational culture where the employees only want to perform their assigned tasks and go home, such a culture is unlikely to have energetic employees capable of enabling the organization to meet its profit targets. Furthermore, a suitable culture is the one that systematically support efficient development and implementation of a strategy, as well as one that promotes the culture of teamwork, creativity, innovation, knowledge sharing, and cooperation among all organizational members (Scholz 1997, p. 86). Conclusively, this paper has significantly established that culture eats strategy for breakfast. Realistically, an organization cannot execute a strategy without a culture. Nevertheless, it is very critical for an organization to leverage its organizational strengths so as to enable and hasten a change strategy program, as well as to counterbalance the cultural weaknesses. Therefore, the organizational leadership needs to change with a focus to create a suitable organizational culture that can facilitate a strategy to become a reality. Thus, based on this discussion, organizational culture usually eats strategy for breakfast, and if not checked accordingly, it can further eat organizational reputation for lunch. List of References Gupta, B 2011, “A comparative study of organizational strategy and culture across industry,” Benchmarking an International Journal, Vol. 18, No. 4, p. 510-528.  Kono, T 1994, “Changing a Companyʼs Strategy and Culture”, Long Range Planning, Vol. 27, No. 5, p. 85-97. Scholz, C 1995, “Organizational Culture and Strategy: A Study of Cultural Influences on the Formulation of Strategies, Goals, and Objectives in Two Companies”, Organization Studies Walter de Gruyter GmbH Co KG, Vol. 16, No. 3, p. 532-535. Scholz, C 1997, “Corporate culture and strategy— The problem of strategic fit”, Long Range Planning, Vol. 20, No. 4, p. 78-87. Schwartz, H & Davis, SM 1998, “Matching corporate culture and business Strategy,” Organizational Dynamics, Vol. 10, No. 1, p. 30-48. Read More