What happens when culture and strategy pull apart

The strategy was clear: work across functions, break down silos, and deliver outcomes that no single team could achieve alone.

But the culture had other ideas.

I was part of a leadership team that had just launched a new strategy in a deeply siloed organisation. We knew the way of working needed to change. So we went straight to the systems and processes we thought would drive it.
Performance measures, team structures, and decision rights.

It took years. And some of it worked.

But we missed something.

We never intentionally discussed or designed the culture that would enable our strategy. Rather, we focused on the mechanics and assumed the culture would follow.

It didn't.

What I have learned since, through years of working in this space and through my own research, is that even when organisations do design their culture, most focus on the cognitive side: values, behaviours, and systems. 

What rarely gets addressed is the emotional culture: what you want people to feel and not feel for the strategy to land.

Get the emotional culture right, and it drives the behaviours, the systems, and the ways of working that follow.

In our case, we never asked that question. People were carrying the fear of losing relevance and the anxiety of being measured differently. What we never harnessed was the excitement of being part of something bigger. The pride in building something new. The energy that comes from working in ways that actually matter.

Most culture work starts with values and stops at behaviours, because the emotional layer is the uncomfortable one to name out loud. Working through what your strategy needs people to feel, and what's currently in the way, is the work in Leadership.

It is not just my experience. 64% of the leaders in my research rated culture alignment as a top priority for execution, yet most had never assessed whether their emotional culture matched the strategy they were trying to deliver.

Emotions drive behaviours. Behaviours drive culture. Culture drives performance.

A team that feels trust collaborates. A team that feels fear protects. You do not need to mandate the behaviour if you design the emotional conditions that produce it.

This is part of lever 7 (Culture for Execution) of the Strategy Execution by Design Model. See the full framework →

Not sure which of the seven levers is holding your execution back? Take the Strategy Execution Maturity Model Assessment →

Written by Rebecca Reti, strategy and execution consultant working with boards and executive teams across Australia and New Zealand.

The one-pager maps six common culture types and the emotions that drive them. See it on LinkedIn →