“Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” – Peter Drucker
Easily captivated by pithy quotes, I keep a running list (despite questionable attribution). If in print, I’ll keep it as a clipping.
Just a day after picking up the Drucker quote above, I picked up The Icarus Deception by Seth Godin at my neighborhood library.
Here’s a little intersection.
Not even a dozen pages in, Godin drives straight into Drucker’s strong, tight statement in the context of concepts like The Long Tail, Tipping Point, Purple Cow, and GTD.”
“These cutting-edge strategies and tactics seem to promise a pain-free way to achieve your goals. You can read about a new strategy, find a guaranteed, impersonal way to achieve, point the industrial machine at a new market niche or a new sort of note-taking technique or buzzword and, presto, results without pain. Ideaviruses will be unleashed, points will be tipped, and tails will get longer.
Alas, there isn’t a pain-free way to achieve your goals.
I’ve read these books. I’ve written some of them. And I love them all, but the ideas are not enough without commitment. They’re not enough because strategy is empty without change, empty without passion, and empty without people willing to confront the void.”
The Bottom Line
I’ve been guilty of seeking easy answers in books, articles, and blog posts. But the power of strategy, of course, is in execution, feedback, and modification.
The real answers, then, are in individual attitude, passion, and commitment … in company culture.
