December 06 2009
culture trumps strategy

From John Byrne's blog...

As John Gardner once observed, most of the things that prevent the renewal of an organization can be found in the mind. It's not a matter of new ideas.

"There is usually no shortage of new ideas,"

wrote Gardner in Self-Renewal

"The problem is to get a hearing for them. And that means breaking through the crusty rigidity and stubborn complacency of the status quo."

Yet the rules, customs, and procedures in organizations always favor the past. That's why culture trumps strategy all the time. The cultural cues are that print (the past) is more important than digital (the future).