Leading with Strategy

9AIM for Building Culture with Strategy, Structure, and Soul

Organizational culture is one of those things everyone talks about at work but very few define clearly.  You feel it the moment you walk into an organization: how people interact, how decisions are made, how safe or tense the energy feels in a room. But when we ask leaders to define it, we often get vague answers. Or, worse, we get a laminated values card and a smile.

I have spent two decades studying, teaching, and helping leaders transform culture, and I still ask the same simple question in every engagement:

What does culture actually mean here?

If we cannot define it, we cannot shift it.

And if we cannot shift it, we cannot lead with it.

Culture as Strategy's Invisible Hand

Culture has always been the silent force behind strategy. It is what carries strategy forward or quietly erodes it from within.

Culture is more often a hindrance than a help to strategy realization. This is a blunt truth, and one that most leaders recognize when they pause long enough to look beyond the surface. Strategies often fail not because they were bad ideas but because the organization's culture couldn't support them.

We need to begin not by treating culture and strategy as separate but by understanding their interdependence.

Culture, in short, is the ecosystem strategy needs in order to live.

Most Definitions Fall Short

Many definitions of culture float around.

“Culture is how we do things around here.”

“Culture is what people ...