Achieved Strategies

We are entering the final day of Wake Up & Shake it Up. Today we look at culture’s undeniable influence on strategy and success.

Cyrus Aram is the Director of Strategy & Operations, helping to lead the GTS Transformation. He brings over 17 years of private and public sector experience in the areas of customer strategy, business transformation, planning, program, change and quality management.

Business Transformation.

Two words which in the domain of both public and private sector carry definitions which are as diverse as they are numerous.

For sake of this blog, let’s say “transformation” allows you to move from your current organizational state to a desired future state (sound logical?).

The next step surely is to present a consultant triangle around transformation- take a look at the one below.

Perhaps you have spent many years trying to balance these worlds of People, Process and Tool.  Perhaps you have seen articles that allocate the percent success factor each of these dimensions carry upon your critical, strategic initiative.

I have bad news to share.

While this “triple constraint” is important (heck I have made a good living off of managing them), the underlying Big Play (defined as a real important thing to pay attention to) is NOT the People, Process and Technology of an organization but the CULTURE in which they operate.

Culture in my plain English term is the set of norms that govern an organization.

Show me a culture where a high sense of urgency exists, change is seen as a constant then I will characterize one transformation plan.

Show me a culture that is complacent, slow to move, then the transformation road map takes a very different turn.

I’d love to hear your responses. Share them below.