This post was originally published on the Switch and Shift blog

There’s a lot being written about organizational culture “eating strategy for lunch,” and I certainly understand the sentiment. Most of us have heard about companies who might have chosen a sound strategy, but watched it fall apart because a dysfunctional or even contradictory culture got in the way. Culture is powerful, and making the assumption that you can easily overcome its effect will surely come back to haunt you.

But the “eating for lunch” metaphor is fundamentally inaccurate. You don’t sit down one day and develop your culture, and then turn around the following week and develop your strategy, hoping that the two end up being compatible. That’s not how it works, at least not in successful organizations.

Culture and Strategy are two sides of the same coin. Remember, your culture is not some interesting “vibe” inside your organization—it is the collection of words, actions, and thoughts that clarifies and reinforces what is truly valued inside the organization. That’s not values, with an “s” (we all love integrity, honesty, quality, etc.), but valued, with a “d.” It’s what gets our attention, our resources, and our rewards. What is valued will drive our behavior, and that’s why culture is so important.

And that’s also why it has to be connected to strategy. Implementing strategy quite obviously requires a concerted effort on behalf of all your employees. Culture, in clarifying to everyone what is valued, will drive employee behavior, therefore the two concepts must be integrated internally. Your culture must value the behaviors that drive the success of the enterprise.

For example, in the research for our latest book, Maddie Grant and I studied a healthcare company in Omaha, Nebraska that provides rehabilitation services to people with brain and spinal chord injuries. This is tough work, to say the least, since they are not just providing routine healthcare—they are working to rebuild shattered lives. They discovered that rebuilding shattered lives is something you can only do when you connect to the deeper motivations inside an individual, so strategically, knowledge of the patient’s hopes, dreams, and desires became critically important inside the organization. When you file a personal injury claim you are more than likely doing so because you are injured and want compensation for those injuries. A personal injury settlement is very important to you because you have more than likely lost income due to your injury not to mention future income because you are no longer able to work as you once did. According to this car accident law firm, this is important and you need to find a Boston personal injury attorney who will help you win your personal injury settlement. Remember that there are many Boston personal injury lawyers in the area and you should consult with the best ones in order to have the best strategy for winning your personal injury claim. There are many strategies for winning a personal injury claim, but one of the most important is to win the accident solicitor over. You can also find more info to know more about how to claim compensation for accident. Approach the Clearwater law firm for disability claims who are considered to be the best in this field. When he/she talks with you about your injuries don’t just mention what injury or injuries you have and be done. Instead, really talk to the accident solicitor and inform them of what happened to you. Make it a narrative and express how you feel about your injuries. Tell the solicitor how now you feel like less of a person because you can’t even walk around and do things for yourself. Or, say that you feel helpless and guilty because your spouse now has full responsibility of the income and taking care of the family. You can also click site to know more about how to get legal help.  You can get help from Manhattan Law Firm ASK4SAM for legal advice.

Really get the emotions out and show how your injury has affected you mentally. When the compensation solicitor sees how you feel and can empathize with you then you are better off at winning a large sum of money for your personal injury claim. If the compensation solicitor can’t tell from talking with you that the injury has significantly impacted your way of life then you probably won’t get as much money as you are hoping for.

And their culture is completely in synch with this strategic insight. Internal decision-making authority, for example, is actually very flexible and fluid, despite the fact that they have a traditional hierarchy on paper. If someone lower in the hierarchy has more knowledge about the hopes and dreams of the patient, they will inevitably play a more important role in the decision making, even if that means the CEO has to take a back seat in the meeting. They didn’t choose to have a fluid hierarchy because they have an abstract belief about the power of decentralization. They choose to have a fluid culture because it drives their success.

So ignore the debate about culture versus strategy and who eats whom. Focus on integrating culture and strategy in order to generate the behavior that will give you consistently better results.

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