Habits Drive Behavior Drives Culture

You might have heard of the famous saying “Culture eats Strategy for Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner”. You can strategize all day long, if your (corporate) culture doesn’t support your efforts (or is even diametrically opposed), you won’t get anywhere. Want people to take risks? You can tell them all day long — if you don’t live and model it, nothing will change.

Which means that behavior drives culture. What you do becomes who you are.

And how do you change behavior? By forming habits. As we say in the GyShiDo Manifesto: Do the right things over and over again. Consistency forms habits. Habits make hard things effortless.

Here’s the thing with habits: It takes time to have them manifest themselves in you. The University College of London found out in a study that it takes on average 66 days to form a habit. Figure out what you want to do, then do it. Again and again.

Habits form behavior which drives culture — which beats strategy any day.