It is rightly said “Culture Eats Strategy for Breakfast”. However, most of the Organizations still take this as just a statement which is merely taken as “Good to Hear” than “Good to Implement” statement. In reality, what exactly is the case? Are the Management Gurus around the World just saying so or is the statement actual true? Let me put in some of my perspectives and experience around the same.

I had an experience of setting up a unit in Nepal totally new and the Project Team which had HR representatives also was given the responsibilities of planning end to end Systems and Practices. From HR perspective, there were many researches done around the Organizational overall objectives so that the Best HR Practices are developed, implemented and institutionalized there.

One of the most important part was setting up of a right culture there among others.
The Management had a set of strategies to ensure a right culture which are: Sourcing fresh talents to mold as per Organizational requirements; Setting up of Terms of Engagement or Culture; and then living by those cultural parameters.

The most important question was around setting up an expected Terms of Engagement or Culture in the Unit. There would have been an easier approach of setting up of the terms of engagement and then asking the team members to note the same which is a Top Down Approach. However, the Management Team decided to go for a different approach of cocreating them.

1.    Cocreate the Culture or Terms of Engagement among People Managers.
Newly sourced and inducted People Managers were given the objectives of setting up of the Unit and there were various ‘Active Based Exercises’ letting the people managers know more about important of terms of engagement and then finally FGD (Focused Group Discussions) to arrive at the Major Headings of Culture or Engagement.

2.    Finalize the same at Top Level and giving a shape to it in line with Organizational Objectives.
The FGD outcomes of the People Managers were tweaked a bit in terms of right wording and the same was presented to Top Management to understand if those were in line with the Organizational 

Objectives of setting up the Unit however not changing the essence of the discussion that happened during the People Managers forum.

3.    Cocreate the Culture or Terms of Engagement among all employees with the help of People Manager in line with the pre set up culture.
Once the People Managers and Top Management were aligned in terms of broad level of Terms of Engagement or Culture, a set of sessions were conducted for other employees and jointly with People Managers focusing more on the Organizational objectives. 

4.    Define Dos and Donts of the Culture or Terms of Engagement for everyone to live by the same.
The cocreation sessions ended with the joint sessions taking World Cafee approach to coocreate the behaviours that would be required to attain the Organizational Objectives. Further, Dos and Don’ts of those behaviours were also finalized jointly which would help in terms of living the Values by All.

To sum up, Culture must be aligned with Organizational Objectives (Direction) and Brand Value of the Organization and further, the Culture when cocreated by all, employees will be able to better live by them and help Organizations in a long run.