Culture Eats Strategy for Breakfast

Admin Account
Aug 11
5 min read

And Most Teams Don’t Even Know What They’re Serving

Why This Series — and Why Now?

Over the past few months, my role at work has evolved — all good changes, but changes nonetheless. I now find myself in an interesting position: working as part of a team of product specialists developing our own products under a single line manager, and leading two separate delivery teams responsible for building and deploying those products to clients.

About four weeks ago, I was asked to take on leadership of an additional delivery team — another dozen people focused on deploying technology into the field. That means I’m now leading two quite different delivery teams, alongside contributing to product strategy and development.

What’s really struck me is just how different the cultures are across these teams. Same company, same general manager, same industry — completely different team vibes. Different energy, different rituals, different ways of working. It’s a reminder that culture isn’t set by the org chart — it’s shaped at the team level, by people, purpose, and pace.

One of the first things I usually look at when trying to improve team performance is culture — not the fluffy kind, but the real, functional kind: how we behave, how we communicate, and how we get things done. So this three-part series is my attempt to unpack that thinking: what culture is, why it matters, and how to influence it — from wherever you sit in a team.

To round out the series, I’ve also included three practical artefacts I think you’ll find useful:

A Culture Influencer Cheat Sheet — 10 simple actions for shaping culture, whether you’re a team member or a leader.
A Culture Health Self-Assessment — a 10-question diagnostic to help your team reflect on how your current culture is tracking.
A Mini Playbook — three quick rituals you can implement today to start reinforcing the culture you want.

but you will have to stay with me for the whole series to access those.

Introduction

You’ve probably heard the quote: "Culture eats strategy for breakfast." It gets thrown around a lot — but rarely unpacked properly. What it really means is this: your big ideas, strategic plans, and bold goals will fall flat if your team’s culture doesn’t back them up.

In this first article of our three-part explainer series, we’ll break down what workplace culture is, why it has such an outsized impact, and how you can start seeing it more clearly in the team around you.

What Is Workplace Culture, Really?

Workplace culture isn’t the perks or posters — it’s what people expect, tolerate, and repeat every day. It’s the habits, language, priorities, and unwritten rules that shape how your team behaves.

It shows up in:

How people speak in meetings
What happens when someone makes a mistake
Who gets recognised, and who gets ignored
What’s swept under the rug, and what’s acted on

And most importantly: it’s shaped by what you do, not what you say.

Why Culture Eats Strategy

Here’s why Drucker’s quote still hits hard: no matter how good your strategy is on paper, it won’t work if the culture resists it.

You can say you want innovation, but if your team’s terrified of getting it wrong, no one will try anything new. You can claim you’re customer-first, but if staff are under pressure to hit time-based metrics, they’ll cut corners. Culture is the environment that either enables or suffocates strategy.

“Culture is not the most important thing — it’s the only thing.”

– Jim Sinegal, Co-Founder of Costco

Quasi-Teams: Understanding Culture Through Familiar Lenses

To bring culture to life, let’s compare workplace teams to the kinds of groups we all understand intuitively: sporting teams, families, and friendships. These aren’t perfect metaphors, but they help make culture feel real.

1. The Sporting Team

You know those footy teams that are just hard to play against? Not because they have the biggest stars, but because they’re disciplined, relentless, and play for each other. That’s culture.

It’s the team that never gives up on a chase-down tackle, that doesn’t drop their heads when they fall behind. It’s not in the playbook — it’s in the shared mindset. That same idea applies in the workplace: some teams just feel tougher, more accountable, more united. That’s not talent. It’s culture.

2. The Family

Families have their own quirks and dynamics. Some are supportive and warm, others can be passive-aggressive or prone to conflict avoidance. You can’t always explain it, but you can definitely feel it.

Workplaces are the same. In some teams, everyone backs each other up — even when things go wrong. In others, there’s tension beneath the surface and everyone tiptoes around issues. You might even find one team member taking on the ‘mum’ or ‘dad’ role, organising everything and carrying the emotional load.

3. The Friendship Group

Every friendship group has its vibe. Maybe one person always takes the lead, maybe another cracks the jokes, maybe there’s a silent agreement never to talk about anything serious. Some groups are inclusive; others are cliquey.

In a team, you see the same patterns. Who actually makes decisions? Who brings the energy? Who sits slightly outside the group? Culture is what governs these dynamics — even if there’s no org chart that explains them.

“The culture of any organisation is shaped by the worst behaviour the leader is willing to tolerate.”

– Gruenter & Whitaker

Culture Has Layers: The Iceberg Model

To round it out, Edgar Schein’s “iceberg” model gives us a neat way to break culture into layers:

Artefacts – What you can see: how people dress, office layout, tools used, meeting rhythms.
Espoused Values – What people say they believe: mission statements, values posters, leadership speeches.
Underlying Assumptions – What people really believe, shown in how they behave, especially under pressure.

Real culture change means going below the surface — not just rebranding or writing a new set of values.

Quick Culture Check

Ask yourself:

Who gets praised or promoted in your team? Why?
What happens when someone challenges an idea?
How are mistakes handled?
Do people feel safe admitting they don’t know something?

The answers tell you more about your culture than any policy ever will.

Wrapping Up

Culture isn’t just a soft concept — it’s the hard truth behind whether your strategies work or stall. And it’s not set in stone. Every team has a culture, but not every team realises they can shape it.

In the next part of this series, we’ll look at why there’s no universal 'best' culture — and how different environments, goals, and team types need different cultural foundations.

Next up: "The Right Culture for the Right Team — Why One-Size-Fits-All Cultures Fail"