| Collaboration: Strategy and Culture
‘Culture eats strategy for breakfast’
The above quote is attributed to the management consultant, educator, and author, Peter Drucker, whose thoughts and writings contributed to the philosophical and practical foundations of much of modern management practice today
As with many quotations this is a misinterpretation and is not Drucker’s words. Whilst he may have agreed with the sentiment of this simple statement it is not his style of presenting a point. The origins of this misreading most probably lies in a 1991 a Wall Street Journal article in which Drucker says: ‘Culture – not matter how defined – is singularly persistent’
The theme of a persistent culture and the need outlined by Drucker to not change culture but to change habits and behaviours is highly significant to toady as it was then, for if people from organisations are going to intentionally come together around a strategy of collaboratively working together they will need to change behaviours and habits.
In the final paragraphs of his article Drucker examples the success of the US military and its Allies in the first Iraq War in 1990 as to how they worked together having learnt from the failure to cooperate together 7 years earlier in the invasion of Grenada. However, despite ‘all kinds of the conferences, pep sessions and so on, to preach cooperation. Still, less than a year and half ago, the Panama invasion almost foundered because the services still did not cooperate.’
So here we may have the inferred premise, though not stated by Drucker, of ‘culture eating strategy for breakfast’, for indeed the failure of the US military to achieve the strategy was down to the issues of culture where the behaviours and habits of the different US services did not align to generate the collaboration required
Alliancing, partnering, frameworks, projects, contracts and efficient supply chains all rely, as pointed out by Drucker, upon organisations and people changing behaviours and habits. The behaviours and habits that may have worked for organisations as independent and competing businesses in the past are just no longer appropriate in a world where the most effective supply chains work collaboratively around an intentional strategy of mutuality - interdependence - and a shared or shared goals.
A number of business sectors woke up to need for collaboration somewhile ago and have found that you cannot have a strategy of change unless you change behaviours and habits in your culture. However, a slumbering construction sector is walking into the future seemingly immune to the need to change despite evidence for the need.
Whilst Drucker most likely used his experience and intuition in writing his article we have gathered evidence carrying out research and published earlier this year that highlights 16 behaviours and habits that need to change in the Construction sector if any strategy of change and collaboration is not going to be consumed by a ‘singularly persistent culture’.
Understanding culture from within a sector or organisation is difficult to near impossible, for it is persistent as Drucker says with people living in it feeling comfortable with it as it is ‘the way that things work and get done’. More significantly, people will reject what those outside may observe and feedback, for behavioural and habit change is uncomfortable despite, as in our case, research having been carried out with people who work every day in the sector.
It is leaders who take onboard the need to lead and drive change in the behaviours and habits of their people that can overcome the ‘persistence of culture’ across the sector. Does the Construction Sector have the drive and depth of experienced leaders?
The Construction Industry Collaboration Initiative - CICI – was established to help leaders, their organisations and people across the sector to work more collaboratively. Please check out here on our website how we could help you?
[1] Drucker, P (1991) ‘Don’t Change Corporate Culture – Use It!’ The Wall Street Journal, 28th March, 1991 |
