While culture and strategy figure out who ate who for breakfast — execution is working on lunch and dinner

I may get sick if I hear about or read another article promoting culture and strategy.
Dem fighting words! Before you write me off … spend a few minutes and read below for some context.
A tale of three cousins … culture, strategy, and execution
If you’re in the business world, you’ve likely heard the term “culture eats strategy for breakfast”. This quote may have spawned an entire industry of case studies, white papers, magazine subscriptions and consultants with their expensive PowerPoint presentations. The words “strategy” and “culture” are affectionately used in meeting rooms to validate opinions and prominently displayed on slides to convey a sense of urgency and importance.
Indeed, “culture” and “strategy” are the white collar words of corporate hallways — often regarded as the holy space for leadership, HR, and business development (M&A) to mingle and plan world domination.
What about “execution”? Well … that’s the blue collar word to its famous cousins above. To many, execution = tactics = the details = grunt work = something the “middle & bottom” of the organization needs to worry about.
After all, it’s the leaders that should set the strategy and then have the rest of the team to execute right? Wrong.
While “execution” is often seen as the non-sexy domain of the “doers” — it is the biggest driver for bringing culture and strategy to life. Without “execution” the famous cousins wouldn’t exist. Who cares about strategy when you cannot make it real? What is culture if you’re not executing the right actions and behaviors, consistently over time?
Bottom line … the business world has become infatuated with “strategy” and “culture” and forgotten the art of actually executing or getting things done. A simple google search yields the following:
“Corporate strategy” — 860,000,000 results
“Corporate culture” — 820,000,000 results
“Corporate execution” — 124,000,000 results
Go figure.
Obviously not a scientific study, but a quick and dirty pulse on our current business zeitgeist.
So what, who cares?
We all should.
I’ve read too many news stories and have too many friends working for corporations, NGOs, governments, and small-businesses that run on the fumes of strategy and culture without the torque and horsepower of execution. This isn’t a big corporation thing. This isn’t a start-up thing. This is an every thing.
The meeting ends. A group of 9 people have just finished flipping through a PowerPoint presentation made by individuals not sitting in the room. 1 person spoke for 85% of the time and there were polite questions along the way. The organizer ends the session with a sentence that includes the words “meet offline”, “next steps”, “re-group”. This basically equates to — we just spoke about an amazing idea and I’ll have someone on my team talk to someone on your team to figure out how this actually gets done. Note: not all meetings are like this (but many are) … you get the point.
Entities are complex and complicated. We used to talk about a matrix structure — something that looked like a tic-tac-toe board — work happened up and down and across teams. Not fun to traverse but manageable if you were smart and worked hard.
Today, we face a matrix to the power of n. Organizational structures that resemble the offspring of a children’s jungle gym and the Star Wars Death Star. This new shape does not naturally occur in nature and is difficult to understand. It makes execution impossible with tools and methods that have not materially changed since the modern corporation was born over 100 years ago. Back then execution was plentiful — with rooms of people ready to toil away and culture and strategy were scarce resources — limited to individuals who were naturally intelligent, had a great education / experience, or access to data.

Today that scarcity is reversed. Strategy and culture pundits are abundantly available — but people who know how to get things done are going the way of the Dodo bird. If they exist they’re usually within the bowels of the organization and not in a position of authority and decision-making.
I paint a grim picture — partly for entertainment value but also partly because it’s true!
Give it to me in 45 seconds or less
- Strategy and culture is necessary but not sufficient to business success. We place too great an importance on them without equivalent regard for the details of getting it done (execution).
- Throw a stone down the hallway and you’ll hit a bunch of individuals and teams whose primary output is PowerPoint. Whether external or internal facing — the product has to be surely more than PPT?
- Too many people receive too many stripes for vision and big ideas. The enterprise value system has to evolve to celebrate folks who convert big ideas into big details, big actions, and ultimately big outcomes.
- As bonus — watch this video (~3min). It made me laugh out aloud several times … only because it rings so true. While the storyline is about an app — you can apply this to any enterprise process, program, or big idea.
If you disagree with the above, stop reading here. If not, then do these three things:
- Ask yourself … what is yours or your team’s primary output? Is it PPT or some MS Office derivative? If yes, check yourself. You spend 40+ hours a week at work, make sure it is meaningful. Spend the time to understand your customer base (external or internal). How many people use your output? How often? Are you pulsing them on value generation? Can you even measure value generation? If you cannot track the number of uses, views, shares of your work — then you’re a tree in a forest … does it really make a noise?
- Are you an organic producer of value or are you in the business of processing information, re-packaging data, and consolidating things from others? Just like food —nutrition gets lost and empty calories get added, the further the plate gets from the farm. Be close to the farm (better yet be a farmer). But Shan, I’m internal … my customers are other employees! Even the most internal teams have the ability to farm … I know … I work on one! Answer this honestly … can you sell your’s or your team’s output on the open market i.e. to another company? If the answer is no or greyish — then you’re not organic.
- Know the details of how stuff gets done — from birth to use by your customer. It isn’t enough to talk about the end state of a cake and all the fancy icing. Make sure you understand the sequencing of the ingredients, understand the baking process, and know the bakers by name. It is easy to lose track of all the inputs and outputs of something by the time it gets to you. A modern matrix organization is a petri dish for a disease I call “shoulder shrugs”. Shoulder shrugs are the natural reaction to a process, system, or program that is fragmented and owned by everyone and no one at the same time. It’s the dirty little secret where everyone knows the experience sucks but its almost impossible to fix because no one knows where the string starts. Don’t lean into shoulder shrugging … follow the string and get into the details of the human actions that have to occur from the beginning to end of anything you touch as an employee or as a team. This starts with talking to your upstream and downstream counterparts.
Cousin Execution has feelings too — give her a seat at the table!
Simon Sinek is one of my favourite online personalities and inspires my thinking. His TED talk on “Start with Why” is one of the most popular of all time (see video below … ~18min).
I agree to start with why. But for god’s sake don’t end with it!
How, what, when, who, and where are equally important. If you can’t answer those follow-ups you don’t have a strategy or a culture — you have a dream. And that spot is reserved for Martin Luther King (RIP).
All organizations will have to deal with a fundamental shift in how work gets done. From decision making to capital allocation to metrics and structure … we’re going to have to re-invent everything.
Technology will be a critical enabler but the good ol’ cousins … culture, strategy, and execution will have to come together to get it done. The entire family is required — give execution a seat at all tables (especially yours).
