The statement that culture is more important than strategy is ridiculously wrong. It’s backward, upside down and complete trash. Some very smart people say this a lot, but today I will tell you why they are wrong to consider strategy second and culture first. Because strategy always comes first! “Culture over Strategy” is one of those statements that drives me insane, and it’s one of the few that make me come on the podcast and make an actual whole episode about it. I also covered this on my business podcast on the Strategic Growth Podcast. https://bit.ly/StrategicPlaylist
We’re talking about what’s called corporate culture. I like to call it company culture because people sometimes think corporate culture means you need to be a corporation, which means you need hundreds or thousands of employees. Workplace or company culture can happen between 2 people or 7 or 10 or 42 or 90 or 5000. But you don’t need hundreds or thousands of employees to have a workplace or company culture.
Every business starts essentially as an idea, typically an idea for a product. We call it the “back of the napkin” where someone pulls out a napkin or a scrap piece of paper and starts sketching or jotting down ideas or something about a product or service that eventually can be developed into a business model and then can be launched and put into the world.
That’s where every business starts with a basic, most basic idea of what the product or service is. People don’t necessarily identify what they do next as strategy, but it is. As soon as you start talking about your product (we will call it a widget) or your service, whatever it is that ultimately you’re selling, you start asking questions: “Who’s going to buy it? Who is this for? Who will appreciate our approach to doing what we’re doing?” How are we going to sell it to them? What channels? What’s the delivery? How are we going to charge them? How are we going to collect our money? How are we going to pay our people? All of these questions that you ask yourself in the back of the napkin phase as to how to develop a product that can become a business, as you put a business model behind it all to structure and all the stuff that comes with it.
All of those questions you ask are the beginning of the strategic planning process. That’s strategy. You’ll never develop a product, you’ll never build a business model, you’ll never build a business, you’ll never successfully launch a business without a strategic process. Everything that comes after is based on the strategy, including your company culture.
It’s Saturday. I’m in the office. This is the #SaturdayMorningHustle podcast. Listen while your competition is still sleeping. https://bit.ly/ListenToSMH
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