Culture Only Eats Bad Strategy

In discussions about higher education leadership, I often hear people invoke management guru Peter Drucker’s legendary (and perhaps apocryphal) claim that “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” The catchy phrase is taken as gospel by many leaders, advisers and consultants. But is it true? Only, I suggest, if you possess a very limited grasp on strategy. 

Institutional culture is very powerful, of course, and it can prevent actors – boards, administrators, or faculty members – from successfully pushing forward their initiatives.  One sees this all the time in higher education.  A president’s desire to add vocational courses or majors may run afoul of an institution’s deep cultural commitment to liberal arts education.  A board’s effort to place a businessperson at the helm of the institution may falter in the face of deep on-campus skepticism about business executives in general and their degree of understanding of educational and intellectual values in particular.  An administrator’s efforts to change hiring practices to increase diversity may run into opposition from those who value “the way we have always done it.”

Do these common examples demonstrate that culture eats strategy for breakfast? I think not. When proposals fail because of strong opposition grounded in long-standing institutional values, it is usually not because strategy cannot overcome culture, but because the change agent possessed a bad strategy, or no strategy at all.  

A strategy, the dictionary tells us, is “a careful plan or method for achieving a particular goal.”  In higher education, any such “plan or method” must take the cultural norms of the specific institutional setting into account.  It is not enough to possess “strategic goals” and a timeline to “roll them out.” Higher education leaders also need to ask themselves: what cultural norms are affected by this proposed change? How strong are these cultural norms?  If cultural barriers are strong, what is our strategy to modify those norms over time, in order to make it possible to achieved our goals?  If a leader ignores culture, then her strategy will certainly be toast.  But a leader need not defer to deep cultural opposition. Cultures can be altered; norms and values can be changed.  A good leader should not throw in the towel in the face of expected cultural opposition.  Instead, she must explicitly recognize cultural barriers to success and devise rational methods to overcome those barriers.   

Let us take the example of a business leader appointed to serve as president of a higher education institution. In these cases, there is almost always going to be deep cultural resistance to such an appointment: many students, faculty members, and staff may experience profound dismay that a businessperson, and not an educator, has been selected to lead them.  This cultural opposition may prevent the new leader from implementing their agenda if it is ignored. If, however, the leader has a strategy to deal with this problem it can be overcome.  The newly elected leader might candidly admit that she has a lot to learn and devise a plan to learn from – and be seen to take advice from – on-campus leaders. She might quietly decide not to introduce new ideas or make proposals for change until a year or more has passed, and to devote that year to building trust and alliances.  During that time, she might take highly symbolic actions that display a commitment to and respect for the institution’s traditional values. She might then begin to introduce new ideas slowly, laying a factual foundation to explain the need for change, and to begin that work through the institution’s traditional governance mechanisms.  In short, she might develop and implement a strategy specifically designed in light of deeply rooted cultural resistance.

In the same fashion, a leader seeking to create a new controversial major or department must have a strategy to overcome cultural resistance to change. The new major might be proposed at first as a short-term pilot, and not a permanent change.  If it requires significant resources, the leader might commit additional resources at the same time to programs that opponents value, in order to reassure them that that the institution’s “traditional focus” will not altered. The leader might decline to act unilaterally, but instead form a committee to study the idea and report back to the community on its value. 

In sum, any strategy worthy of the name will include elements designed to address and overcome cultural opposition. If the strategy is well-designed and implemented then it, not culture, will prevail. Culture only eats bad strategy for breakfast. 

I must add one additional caveat. Sometimes, and not infrequently, it is wiser for a leader to defer to broadly shared cultural norms than to seek to overcome them.  Not all cultural commitments that stand in the way of change are bad.  If a leader discovers that there is deep-rooted cultural opposition to a new vocational major, for example, it might be wiser for the leader to spend his time seeking to understand the basis of that cultural commitment before he tries to alter it.  He may discover that what he first perceives as a cultural barrier to change is, in fact, a cultural value that underlies long-term institutional success. 

Colleges and universities are, for the most part, deeply conservative institutions. This is, in part, because certain cultural norms are deeply ingrained in academic life.  Some of these norms are vitally important to long-term institutional success. The fact that faculty members at most institutions are deeply committed to intellectual values and the life of the mind, and often possess sufficient power to enforce that norm, keeps many academic institutions focused on their primary mission despite efforts of other stakeholders to shift priorities to job training or sports.  Other cultural norms – deep suspicion about markets and efficiency – may have a less positive impact.