Why culture is strategy

"We've grown strangely comfortable separating things that were never meant to be separated: leadership from management, vision from execution, and perhaps most damaging, culture from strategy. Inside companies, this split shows up everywhere. A CEO announces a bold future about democratizing access or building a place where people take smart risks. Then culture gets handed to HR as if it belongs on a separate track, while the business strategy unfolds on its own timeline."

"You say you value accountability, but there is no shared understanding of what it looks like. You say "family first,", but still expect employees to respond while out of office. You say being a good partner matters, but your incentives penalize anyone who extends the sales cycle to build trust. This is not about leaders being disingenuous. It is about the reality that business is messy, and unspoken values tend to override the ones printed in the handbook."

"That distance is not neutral. It creates avoidable friction, the kind of drag that occurs when people try to act on values the organization has not built around. Built In's 2024 Culture Report shows that 74% of employees feel demotivated in a poor cultural fit, and 61% would leave for a stronger cultural fit even without a major raise. The message is clear: Misalignment is expensive."

Organizations often separate leadership from management, vision from execution, and culture from strategy, creating a gap between stated intentions and operational reality. CEOs announce bold futures while culture is handed to HR and strategy follows its own timeline. That distance produces avoidable friction and forces employees to decode unspoken rules. Built In's 2024 Culture Report finds 74% of employees feel demotivated in a poor cultural fit, and 61% would leave for a stronger cultural fit even without a major raise. Vague values yield structural costs when values are declared but not defined, embedded, or incented. The fix is clarity, not charisma.

Read at Fast Company