“Culture eats strategy for breakfast.”
It sounds polished. Thoughtful. Even profound. It's been quoted endlessly in boardrooms, keynote speeches, and HR offsites as a kind of unassailable truth. But let’s not confuse repetition with wisdom.
In reality, the phrase is both overused and misunderstood. Worse—it’s become a strategic alibi. It excuses operational underperformance by elevating “culture” to a mythical, untouchable status. But in practice, culture does not lead strategy. Culture follows strategy—always. And when it doesn’t, it’s because the strategy was unclear, uncommitted, or never operationalized.
Let’s put it plainly: if your culture is “eating” your strategy, you didn’t have a strategy. You had a wish list with no mechanisms to enforce it.
Many organizations pride themselves on their culture. They highlight values on office walls, celebrate emotional intelligence, and speak glowingly about psychological safety. But beneath the surface, these same organizations often suffer from a chronic inability to execute. Strategic plans stall. Accountability is diluted. Decisions are delayed.
This isn’t a coincidence. A culture-first mindset, when not rigorously tethered to measurable outcomes, easily mutates into groupthink. What’s labeled as “collaborative” is often just indecisive. What’s celebrated as “inclusive” frequently becomes a fear of prioritization.
Consider an example from our consulting practice. A mid-market SaaS company had plateaued at approximately $22 million in annual recurring revenue. The founder-CEO touted a “family culture,” emphasizing harmony, loyalty, and emotional safety. But their top engineers were leaving. Product roadmaps were slipping. Quarterly revenue targets were missed five cycles in a row.
We conducted a 30-day Systems Audit. What we found was predictable: roles lacked clarity, decision rights were informal, and the strategy was broad enough to mean everything—and therefore nothing. Their culture wasn’t eating strategy. Their absence of strategy had enabled a culture optimized for comfort, not performance.
Once we instituted structural changes—tightened roles, embedded accountability metrics, and clarified the decision architecture—the culture evolved almost immediately. Within 90 days, project velocity doubled. Within the fiscal year, they crossed $30 million in ARR.
Culture is not the cause. It’s the effect.
Boeing is a cautionary tale not because culture sabotaged strategy, but because strategy abandoned integrity. In its transition from an engineering-led organization to a financially-driven one post-McDonnell Douglas merger, Boeing prioritized shareholder returns over product safety. The internal cultural shift wasn’t accidental—it was engineered.
The 737 MAX crisis did not emerge from toxic culture alone. It emerged from a strategic model that rewarded speed to market and margin compression over engineering diligence and long-term trust. Employees were neither empowered nor incentivized to speak out. The strategy reshaped the culture. And the consequences were catastrophic.
This wasn’t culture overriding strategy. It was strategy dictating a culture that ultimately collapsed under the weight of its own misalignment with operational reality.
Culture is not an independent force. It’s an organizational shadow—cast by systems, behaviors, leadership choices, and strategic priorities.
Take Adobe, for example. In 2012, Adobe made a bold strategic shift from perpetual software licensing to a subscription-based model via Creative Cloud. This required not just a pricing overhaul, but a fundamental change in how teams built, shipped, and supported software.
To execute this shift, Adobe dismantled legacy metrics, revised incentives, and restructured teams to emphasize continuous delivery over boxed releases. This wasn't a culture initiative—it was a structural realignment. The culture changed not because Adobe declared new values, but because they built a new business model that demanded—and rewarded—new behavior.
At Seattle Consulting Group, we advise clients to stop treating culture as an independent variable. We apply a simple, non-negotiable framework:
1. Design the Strategy First
Begin with clarity: where are we playing, how are we winning, and what trade-offs are we willing to make? A real strategy excludes as much as it includes.
2. Engineer the Systems That Reinforce It
Align hiring, performance management, compensation, and governance to the strategy. If you say innovation matters but reward predictability, your system will reveal your true priorities.
3. Let Culture Emerge—Then Audit Relentlessly
Culture is not what’s on the walls. It’s what gets tolerated in meetings. Audit it. Calibrate it. But don’t imagine you can design it separately from the systems that produce it.
In the aftermath of the pandemic, Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky made a controversial move: he ended the company’s fully remote work policy. Critics labeled it a betrayal of flexibility and culture. But Chesky was playing a different game.
He understood that Airbnb is not a software company—it is a design-centric hospitality platform. Creativity and cohesion mattered more than geographical freedom. In his own words: “The most creative work happens in person. We’re a startup, not a lifestyle brand.”
This was not a cultural statement. It was a strategic imperative. And the culture adjusted accordingly.
Every executive has heard (or said) some version of these phrases:
“That approach won’t work here—our culture’s different.”
“We tried that once, but it didn’t align with our values.”
“Our people aren’t ready for that kind of change.”
What these statements often reveal is not cultural misalignment—but leadership hesitancy. Culture becomes the shield behind which indecision hides.
It’s easy to praise culture. It’s harder to challenge it. But no meaningful strategy can survive without friction. Cultures that are never challenged don’t evolve—they atrophy.
If you are serious about performance, stop trying to “change the culture” through workshops and slogans. Instead, change:
What you reward
What you measure
Who you promote
What you tolerate
Culture will follow. It always does.
The adage that “culture eats strategy for breakfast” flatters indecisive leadership. It absolves organizations from the difficult work of design, alignment, and discipline. But strategy—real strategy—is what gives culture its shape, purpose, and edge.
Culture matters deeply. But not as a precondition. As a consequence.
So no—culture doesn’t eat strategy.
But weak leadership?
That gets devoured every time.
If your culture is misaligned, the root cause is likely systemic. Let’s find it.
Request a 30-minute Culture-System Audit™ or register for our next Executive Briefing:
“Culture Is Not a Moat—It’s a Mirror.”
Visit: www.seattleconsultinggrp.com/executivebriefing
Or email me directly: jim@seattleconsultinggrp.com
Christensen, C. M. (1997). The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail. Harvard Business Review Press.
McCord, P. (2014). How Netflix Reinvented HR. Harvard Business Review. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2014/01/how-netflix-reinvented-hr
Nadella, S. (2017). Hit Refresh: The Quest to Rediscover Microsoft’s Soul and Imagine a Better Future for Everyone. Harper Business.