Culture eats Strategy for Breakfast

I listened to an interesting podcast today titled “Culture eats Strategy for Breakfast” by University of Canterbury Business School. The podcast is about how culture is more important than strategy in an organization.

He told story of successful company that prioritise culture from the beginning and care about employees and how people work together. The culture is spread by each new employees and they practise and talked about the culture everyday. There is a maximum of 4 level of hierarchy in the company and the executives do not get any special treatment and eats lunch with floor staff. At peak time, executives will drive forklifts and work together with everyone else to ensure the service is delivered.

There is no need for budget, if something is necessary then go ahead and spend it. They empower the branch manager so that they can get their job done instead of allocating specific budget.

I thought this was very interesting and something to keep in mind in building my own company one day.