Forget strategy, company culture is the trump card for struggling businesses
Up against changing tech, tariffs and government policy, it’s company culture, not strategy, that will help businesses most, writes Chris Lewis
If you’re trying to work out your strategy when everything keeps changing, can I offer a little advice? Don’t bother. This is not the time to plan how to go from A to B. There are a number of reasons why. B might shift or no longer be available. Your perception of A might change because the alphabet is now in Cyrillic. While you were thinking about that, someone replaced the whole alpha taxonomy with a numeric one.
The tactical variables here are the three ‘T’s: Tariffs, Technology and Treasury. We’ve never seen a time where tariffs can be on one week and off the next; similarly with AI, the technology is changing so fast, what you did last week may suddenly become obsolete. Finance, which used to be more consistent, has shown itself to be anything but.
This is creating a stop start world where people, rather than try something, prefer to sit and wait. That doesn’t create stability. It creates paralysis. So, you can’t move forward. And you can’t stay where you are.
A strategy will not help you with any of this. A culture, on the other hand, might be the thing you’re looking for. A culture where people can move quickly if something happens. A culture where everyone isn’t paralysed by fear. A culture that listens at the periphery of the team rather than only to those at the top.
Fast, flexible, familiar cultures are ones where the teams work closely together. This is facilitated by being in the office. You’ve heard the objections: “But I’m so much more efficient working from home.” Well, it’s not about your personal efficiency, we’re a team. “It costs too much to commute in.” A business is about adding value to our clients, not reducing your own personal costs. Besides, we save you on telecoms and heating costs. “What’s the point? We never talk to each other.” Here, have a meal on us and get to know each other. You might be surprised at the skills and potential of your colleagues. You’ll almost certainly understand them better.
Competence follows preference
There is a lot of fear out there because of the paralysis. There’s nothing worse than being on your own with time on your hands to play on your mind. On the whole, we worry less if we’re with others. This is partly what’s causing an epidemic of mental illness and it’s especially true among younger colleagues who don’t have much experience of anything else.
Management is merely transactional, but a leadership culture can be transformational. Training experts will always say that competence follows preference. Put simply, people get good at what they like doing. If they like the people they work with, even better.
In good times, people forget what makes a successful company. It’s not just about profits. That’s why it’s called a company. Profits are a by-product of successful culture. No amount of profit ever made a successful culture. Consider also that the bad times can be useful when it comes to creating a successful culture. There’s more competition, standards go up, everyone has to try that bit harder and a shared dynamic can be empowering.
So, if you’re struggling to make sense of the world, you’re not alone. Even with all their experts and data, this sense of displacement can take hold in the boardroom as well. We live in an ambiguous and often contradictory world. Two opposing ideas can simultaneously be true. This is paralysing people who think that all businesses must follow a top-down strategy. The very thing that could most transform their company might be to reinvent a bottom-up culture. You don’t have to be a startup to be new and fresh. Reinvesting in a new office or new structures or new people can all trigger reinvention.
These are tough and unpredictable times but there are still opportunities. To get at them you don’t need just a strategy, you need a culture.
Chris Lewis is founder and CEO of Team Lewis