When Culture and Strategy Disagree

A strategy is a set of behaviors that must become normal. If those behaviors contradict what has been rewarded for a decade, the strategy will be politely absorbed and then ignored.

Common collisions

• "Move faster" inside a company that has never forgiven a public failure.
• "Go upmarket" where every incentive still pays on transaction volume.
• "Become customer-led" where nobody senior has spoken to a customer in a year.

The translation step

For each strategic shift, name the behavior that must change, who must do it differently, what they must stop doing to make room, and what will now happen when it goes wrong. Skip that and you have an announcement, not a strategy.

Culture doesn't eat strategy. It quietly declines to perform it.

Where to look for silent rejection

• Nobody has stopped doing anything since the strategy launched.
• The metrics on the dashboard are unchanged from last year.
• The first person who took the new risk got a bad outcome and no visible support.

Fix the third one first. It is the case everyone is watching.