To achieve and sustain results, the organization needs to align its culture and strategy.
Organizations invest a lot of time and effort in defining their direction and the path they will take to reach their goals and objectives. That chosen path is their strategy, which gets broken down into strategic themes, objectives, and actionable initiatives. Initiatives are then turned into projects, which drive the day-to-day activities of the organization and guide the development of KPIs for everyone. The result is usually a truly elegant and perfect-looking path that appears destined to achieve the desired results and even more.
So why don’t strategies always work as they were intended to? Research shows a large percentage of strategies don’t give the desired results. And yet, organizations continue to invest the time, effort, and money to define them.
Our experience have shown two key reasons for well articulated strategies to not deliver the desired results:
- The culture of the organization is not aligned to the chosen path, the strategy
- A lack of understanding of the strategy by everyone across the organization
The interesting thing we observe, working with a multitude of organizations in the region, is they are ready to invest heavily in defining an elegant strategy but reluctant to invest in dealing with the cultural factors or the enlightenment of the people to what it really means for them. Why? The simple answer is, it is not easy, it requires effort, and it is messy. It may be all those things, but it is also the path to sustainable results.
To achieve and sustain results, the organization needs to align its culture and strategy. You need to choose a strategy that matches your culture (do you know what it is ?); or evolve your culture to rise to the needs of your newly defined strategy. In this process, engaging the people ensures their alignment and commitment.
Paving the way for purposeful action, we must align the guiding path (strategy) and the driving path (culture) to deliver sustainable results.
Think about it, how well do you perform when you have the answers to these questions clear in your mind? Whether you are a leader or an individual contributor, everyone needs this clarity. Organizations need to focus some of their resources on ensuring that every member of the population has that clarity. That is how you can ensure commitment to purposeful action where everyone is pulling in one direction aligned to your chosen path.