Culture Still Eats Strategy for Breakfast

Peter Drucker once said, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” Throughout my career, I have spent a lot of time in the strategy room. But no matter what we decided there, until we got the organizational culture right, we were unsuccessful in executing our goals.

So, I must agree with Mr. Drucker.

At Onex, we take pride in our organizational culture. It took us years to move away from traditional top-down management to a people-centric focus. That is not to say we are perfect, as we are continuously trying to improve.  For 2022, our company’s wildly important goal is to improve our customers’ experience. If, as a team, we are firing on all cylinders, then the client will be happier.

We started this journey with an organizational culture assessment. The process began with an online survey with questions based around pay, benefits and job satisfaction. Additionally, we included questions that we felt were important for Onex based on the mission of the company to make things better, our core values as they relate to behavior and whether employees felt their contributions were recognized and appreciated. And conducted one-on-one interviews with almost all personnel—in my opinion, the most important part of the process.

Why is feedback so hard to hear, even when you ask for it? Why do you focus on the few negative things when so many things are going well?