Selling With Noble Purpose, 2nd Edition

CHAPTER 23Build a Noble Purpose Culture (and Have More Fun at Work)

Culture eats strategy for breakfast.

—Peter Drucker, management consultant, educator, and author

Every tribe has a culture. Whether it's CrossFit, Game of Thrones, Scientology, or your family, there's a lingo, a set of shared beliefs, and governing principles, both spoken and unspoken.

Peter Drucker's original truism—“Culture eats strategy for breakfast”—is even more true today than it was 20 years ago. As increasingly autonomous employees work in increasingly matrixed organizations, your culture becomes the binding element: the glue that makes it all stick together.

This is a book about one thing—getting your organization aligned, empowered, and laser‐focused on making a difference to customers—so I'll leave the conversations about foosball tables, parental leave, and org structures to other experts. Free lunches, nap pods, and flextime are great. The trend toward more a humane, transparent, inclusive, and supportive work world is long overdue.

But all the free smoothies and ping‐pong tables in the world won't create competitive differentiation if your culture isn't pointed toward customer impact. Many of the culture‐building programs we see today focus on the circumstances and peripherals of work rather than the work itself. It's as if by making the conditions better, somehow soul‐sucking work can become more palatable.

The data tells us that over half the workforce is disengaged. Harvard Business Review ...