Why your workplace culture will always overrule your strategy

By David Pepper, TalentHub

 Whether you’re running a startup of less than ten people, a SME of less than 100 or a global corporate with thousands of employees spread across the globe, your workplace culture plays a bigger role than you think.

And by culture, we don’t mean free pizza or bean bag chairs, or a mission statement pinned to the wall.

Ben Horowitz, cofounder and general partner of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, and author of The Hard Thing About Hard Things, has a clear definition of what workplace culture really is.

 Horowitz defines culture as the “collective behaviour of everybody in the organisation.”

Strategy is important but culture even more so

 Of course, having a business strategy is important.

You need to set out the goals your organisation wishes to achieve and the direction in which your whole team will move to achieve these goals. Ensuring that every member of your business understands the business strategy, and the role they play in achieving it, is critical if you want to run a successful organisation.

But if the workplace culture that underpins how the members of your organisation act and behave in a manner that destroys trust, is unsupportive and allows for bullying to thrive, your business strategy is going to be nothing more than a useless document.

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