Process, strategy, and culture
To succeed in business you need all three. Success can mean a lot of things, but for me it means feeling like I’m driving forward every day. Like I’m not spinning my wheels (or reinventing them). I’ve found that there are three areas where if I invest the right attention, they coalesce into magic and sunshine and happiness. Or, at least, less bashing my head on the desk.
Process helps you get work done, strategy helps you become and remain competitive, and culture unifies any high performing team. In the modern workplace, it’s surprising how few teams really embrace the third heat, Culture, and it’s a shame. The ones who really get it right are in their own league. Here I seek to help you understand what each of these things is and what it is used for so you can set out to build your own patterns.
These three aren’t the same, but are cousins
You can, in theory, limp along with only the first one: Process. If you have the right process in place, you can execute work. If you’re lucky, you’ll have steady work that covers your expenses. You may never get far ahead of the curve, but with good process you can survive.
With good process and a good strategy, you’re competitive and effective. You know what you’re trying to do in the market and you have the rigor in place to execute. Strategy sets the goals, vision, and guardrails on the work you want to do. Strategy is defined by what you can do differently and better than your competition
Add culture to the mix and you’ve got a resilient, scalable organization. The sweet spot with a great culture is that even without a gold-plated mission statement, everyone on the team communicates and works well together. Poor culture is friction, and on modern, agile teams, speed is key.
The order of operations: Culture
To do anything effectively, first decide on your culture. Different for every group of people, it’s the bond between each person and every other person. It will define how you communicate, how you work, what the hard lines are and what values you all represent together.
When I took over the role of leading our practice at Alchemy, I made a conscious decision that I would espouse honesty, availability, and vulnerability. To me, these were not only keys to how I want to work with people, but tenets of good Agile. I decided I would approach strategy and process decisions by being as honest, available, and vulnerable as I could. In this way I got into a constant feedback loop, iterated on our plans, and accepted incoming information humbly. We’re a lot better for it.
An important cultural win, in my mind, is avoiding a top-down or “knowing” culture at all costs. Everyone on your team should be listening and learning while delivering. In the fast-moving modern workplace, the minute you “know” something is the minute you are getting stale. That doesn’t mean never make decisions, rather it means be willing to make new decisions if your first ones turn out to be wrong.
Next in line: Process
Some people will say that Strategy ought to come first, but without process efficiency, you’ll never get anything done, no matter what your strategy is. In the modern workplace, unless you’re the only one in your category, you need process and you need efficiency.
Define for your team how you want to work: Agile? Waterfall? Off-shore? If you have a physical product, what are the steps to go from concept to prototype to production? Quality standards? What are employment levels and the rewards structure? How do you communicate with customers and stakeholders, and in what cadence?
Now, decide how to win: Strategy
Strategy can be boiled down to what you do differently and better than your competition. You might not be cheaper, but you can be better quality. Maybe quality isn’t your top concern, but your time to market is incredible. Maybe you’re using a design system of your own invention. Maybe you’ve got a proprietary system for security that is best-in-class.
Everyone can compete on process and efficiency. That’s the name of the game for most companies — driving down costs and driving up employee efficiency to squeeze out profits. The only problem with that is that alone disregards strategy and culture. In a pool full of efficient dog paddlers, she who can breast stroke will always win. Probably.
Having all three of these running effectively at all times is aspirational — it’s hard. At times you will need to overhaul your process or revamp your strategy to adapt to the market and technology landscape. Culture is harder to change mid-flight, and ideally you won’t have to. Better to start from a position of flexibility and grow organically than to force new culture onto an old one.
If you have thoughts or feedback, let me know in the comments. How have you done this before? Where have you seen it win? Where have you seen it fail?
