: ‘Culture Eats Strategy for Breakfast’ Is developing culture enough when implementing change? Why is it that certain groups add up to be greater than the sum of their parts, while others add up to be less?

Why is it that certain groups add up to be greater than the sum of their parts, while others add up to be less? This is a question leaders and implementors of change have battled with to ensure that a productive, efficient and sustainable environment is created. Coyle (2018) has attributed the successes of such groups to ​‘group culture’:

It would not take long for anyone working within the education sector to recall where the culture has been conducive to change, it would take less time to recall the opposite. The latter more common than many leaders would want to admit and – more often than not – the underlying reason for change failure. Some may believe that culture is fixed, somehow predetermined, but that view is defeatist. Instead, it is not what you are – it is what you do, and must be worked on at every point: a stagnant culture is a declining culture.

In essence, ​‘Culture Eats Strategy for Breakfast’. An expression attributed to Peter Drucker and has been used to describe how any well-designed strategic plan will fall flat if the culture has not engaged and united the team.

Supporting culture through the EEF Implementation in Schools Framework (2024)

The inclusion of ​‘behaviours’ is therefore a welcome update to the Implementation Framework provided by the EEF.

It recognises that implementation and change management is, ​“fundamentally a collaborative and social process driven by how people think, behave and interact” (Sharples, J., Eaton, J., Boughelaf, J, 2024). To achieve this, implementors of change must engage, unite and reflect.

Is developing culture enough when implementing change?

It is clear that culture is the centre for all change processes: uniting, engaging, reflecting together for a common cause, creating a whole, which adds up to more than the sum parts.

However, the meaning of this has often been misconstrued– it was never intended to suggest that a strategy is not needed, nor that a culture would somehow create change alone: a strategy therefore is not the enemy of culture. It enables the group to understand that the change is viable and to appreciate the steps required in the process. It is this process which add to the feeling of uniting and, subsequently, to the building of culture. The relationship between culture and strategy is therefore reciprocal. Culture enables the strategy to be implemented well, whilst a shared strategy can support the team to feel united and engaged in change.

It is therefore not enough to build culture in the hope that this builds change. If the reciprocal relationship is broken in one direction, then the whole cycle is broken and implementation of change will undoubtably fail.

The implementation in Schools Framework must therefore be seen as a whole when implementing change. The process followed wisely: exploring, preparing, delivering and sustaining the strategy, all while nurturing the behaviours needed for culture. A task which on the surface may seem simple, but can be difficult to get right.

References

Coyle, D. (2019). The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups. Random House Uk.
Sharples, J., Eaton, J., Boughelaf, J. (2024) A Schools Guide to Implementation. Education Endowment Foundation: London

Wider Reading

Eastwood, O. (2022). Belonging: unlock your potential with the ancient code of togetherness. S.L.: Quercus Publishing.