Culture and Leadership: Building the right equation

There’s a famous phrase by Peter Drucker in the corporate world: “Culture Eats Strategy for Breakfast,” where as a company you might have the best strategy in the world yet without the support of your employees that strategy will just go to waste.
That phrase really resonated, because many companies are currently building their strategies with a focus on transformation, whether it’s digital, organizational, structural, mergers…etc. The benefits from a strategy perspective can be huge, in terms of cost savings, enhancing revenue streams, creating new business lines…etc.
It’s very clear that planning for a transformation is not the main issue but rather it’s getting the entire organization to support, understand, buy into and drive this transformation. This doesn’t really affect new start-ups, because startups have the liberty to define such strategies early on and create the culture around it easier than companies who have been in the industry for the past 20, 30 or 40 years and are trying to change. To these organizations, the word “change” immediately jeopardizes everyone’s comfort zone: change what, why change, who is going to change, when is the change happening, am I going to be affected by the change, do we really have to change, the company is doing so well, is there really the need to change (and many other corridors chats between employees during coffee and tea breaks).
For leaders, it’s a simple equation, how much would it cost to change, what are the consequences and how much are we are going to gain out of it in the next 5 years and above.
We must understand that change or transformation is something that many if not all organizations will have to undergo to survive. The challenge for leadership teams is not only to build a sustainable strategy but rather to also make sure to build a culture which cultivates and fosters transformation.
As a leader your role goes beyond solely planning and strategizing, and evolves through to actually communicating and creating the necessary cultural changes to adapt to whatever strategy your company needs to embark on. This occurs through constantly sharing the benefits of transformation versus the consequences of stagnation.
Certainly, it’s not easy to get everyone to embrace the ambitions and goals of an organizational transformation, but with the right tactics a good leader will be able to get the majority to back them up during a corridor discussion, so that those who try to spread their agenda will be unsuccessful. These agenda-pushers ultimately concede and join the others, or leave.
In many organizations, changes might affect leaders as well within an organization. Many a time will some organizations be pushed to make changes from the top to ensure that whatever direction the company takes are introduced not only to the bottom layer of the company but also commencing (i.e. cascaded) from the top.
Another example of the transformation nature of organisations can be gauged by Googling the top 10 leadership skills required as of now. You will see traits such as: Integrity, Motivational, Passionate, Good Communicator, Creative...etc. Most probably 50 years ago, Googling the same (assuming google existed back then) would have resulted in traits such as: Punctuality, Years of Experience, Relevant Skill Sets, People Management...etc.
Now, the definition of a leader is very different and very broad compared to what it used to be. Even the courses that were run previously with regards to leadership are completely different to what is run today. While the goals may be similar, the approach is very different.
As a summary, to drive change, sustainability and growth towards the future, an organization will need not only to create a change-conducive culture but also to foster a leadership pool to drive this culture for a better and more successful future in all domains of transformation.