Culture should not eat strategy; they should dine together, shouldn't they?

It’s a lot easier to talk about accountability and transparency than it is to put them into practice in meaningful and effective ways.  The very decision to put accountability and transparency into practice can, in fact, be an important step in transforming the very culture that some say eats strategy for lunch.  Who can afford that kind of lunch!  The expression, culture eats strategy for lunch is, unfortunately, a realistic reminder never to underestimate the corrosive power of people unwilling or unable to work together well enough to survive; there is nothing more dangerous to the effective execution of a strategy than the partial or complete absence of collaboration.  I prefer to believe that the lack of collaboration is due not so much to an unwillingness to work together but rather to the inability to work together efficiently and equitably as guided by a single unifying strategic vision with meaningful measures.  

A tool that I have used, the Performance Blueprint, which I’ll be writing more about over the next few days, helps all of the performers associated with a given strategy, whether they are part of the required EFFORT or the desired EFFECT or both.  

Like a strategy map, the Performance Blueprint helps performers locate themselves.  For a given strategy, there is a constellation of performers and a corresponding constellation of immediate and not so immediate measures to gauge the attainment or approximation of desired progress and/or outcomes.  In this big picture view of the Blueprint it helps to understand the questions behind its moving parts and the distinction between effort and effect, which is where we will pick up again.