A successful business strategy always involves mobilizing people in pursuit of an organizational objective. Without careful attention to aligning people, the strategy is simply a plan on a piece of paper. So what happens when a new strategy clashes with an old culture? “Culture eats strategy for lunch!”

There’s a big debate about who said this first, and whether they said that culture eats strategy for lunch or for breakfast.  But this aphorism always reminds us that implementing a business strategy is very different from formulating a business strategy. Formulation often occurs at the top of organizations. But implementation only works when your people align across all levels of an organization—and across all geographies, functions, product lines, and supply chains. If you want to implement a new strategy you have to see if your culture can itself become new to embrace it.

If you’re interested in overcoming the challenges of achieving alignment by balancing external adaptation and internal integration, and you need a little inspiration, click the read more button.