Culture doesn’t just eat strategy for breakfast. It buries it.
Most transformation efforts fail because they focus on behaviors without uncovering what drives them.
That’s why I used this Culture Map (Dave Grey/Stategyzer) to go deeper, breaking culture change into three layers:
-Outcomes: Measurable goals. “20% increase in employee wellbeing within six months.”
-Behaviors: Observable actions. “Cut status meetings from weekly one-hour to biweekly 30-minute sessions.”
-Influences: Forces maintaining current behaviors. “Belief that thorough discussions require long meetings.”
But mapping isn’t enough....
To change behavior, we need to know why those influences persist and that’s where behavioral frameworks come in:
They help us understand:
-Is it a skill gap or lack of knowledge? -Are environmental or structural barriers causing friction? -Are existing beliefs or values keeping behaviors locked in place?
A recent client’s “thoroughness” culture wasted over 2,000 hours a year in excessive meetings.
Their leaders equated meeting length with leadership quality, and three attempts to cut meeting time failed.
Mapping the influences made the problem visible. Using our approach, we reframed from not just reducing meeting length, but instead to challenging the underlying belief about what makes a meeting “effective.”
The architect in me values the structure and clarity this mapping brings. The contrarian reminds me that culture is also shaped by informal interactions and unexpected dynamics. Both matter.
What cultural forces are killing your strategy? If you can’t map them, you can’t change them.