Question

(2) Look up the quote "Culture eats strategy for breakfast." and explain what it means in terms of teamwork. (2a) Illustrate how this has affected strategy at some place you have worked. Or (2b), alternately, you could talk about this idea in terms of the current White House and how it is affecting American society.

Answer 1

Answer: This phrase means that for the success of any organization, alignment of organizational culture with strategy is essential. If there is a mismatch between the organizational culture and strategy, the strategy is bound to fail. The strategy is implemented by the people and if they do not support strategy then it cannot be implemented successfully. Thus for effective team work inside the organization for implementing a strategy it is required that the strategy is prepared by keeping in mind the organizational culture of the organization.

I previously worked at a restaurant as a part time front line customer service employee. Most of the employees at the restaurant were part time and on casual basis. Therefore we had an informal organizational culture were connection between the people were not as strong as people were not permanent. Therefore the strategy that was prepared by the senior managers kept this fact in mind. We all were provided clear instructions about what to do and each part of our work was fixed. We have to perform only one type of a job in which we were provided training and we were not supposed to do multitasking. Every process was clear and followed as defined. This strategy reduced the requirement of high co ordination between the employees and the role of each employee was limited to his own work. This way the organization aligned its strategy with organizational culture and was successful.