Culture Beats Strategy
Once you’ve internalized this axiom; “Culture Beats Strategy” it is easy to easy to see every contest or competition through that lens. That was a nice strategy the Atlanta Falcons had last night. too bad that were playing against a team with a strong culture. A strategy is a nice thing to have. A culture is essential.
When a team, group, company or family builds a culture it doesn’t need for things to go perfectly. People know what to do in situations that haven’t been thought through and game planned. A team with a culture has a lot of group cohesion around a few basic assumptions. People can take independent action because they know the organization’s goals without having to be directed. A strategy is merely a list of things you want to happen. A culture operates on an entirely different plane.
When Republicans beat Democrats with policies that add up to a lot of threadbare nonsense under the most fleeting scrutiny – they are winning on culture. Democrats seem to be constantly confused about this. They shouldn’t be. Culture beats strategy.
Group membership means something to people in a culture. Group membership is a means to personal ends for people executing a strategy. Members of a culture share values, spoken and unspoken, and you don’t need to explain how any given policy fits into the values of a culture. It either does or doesn’t on its face.
I’m going to step out of character here for a brief moment and disagree. The Patriots won because they created an intensely stressful situation for Matt Ryan nearly every play. Unlike Brady, he didn’t have the confidence to keep making strong passes even after the tide turned against him. While Brady threw more interceptions, he maintained his cool and warmed up as the game progressed, even with several QB sacks on his blind side. The Republicans won for similar reasons; they didn’t flinch even when reality kept sacking them on their blind side. It’s a good metaphor but I contend that strategy will beat culture 9/10 times. The Falcons and the Dems would have had a much better shot if they had put in MIKE MILLER for the fourth quarter.
People are tweeting that the game gave them election-night flashbacks.
sussexdem points out one of the main critiques of the “Strong Culture” theory. It is impossible to differentiate between cause and effect. For me, it is self-evident that success flow from a strong culture, but for others, it is self-evident that success results in a strong culture.
The election is a much better proof of my position that this game. I don’t know enough about the Patriots culture to know how their values and assumptions played out on the sidelines in the 3rd quarter. [Although, I know that the Falcons “fast defense” strategy ran out of steam as the game wore on, and they switched to zone coverage].
Asn we all know enough about how Clinton conducted her campaign to know that the election was a classic Culture vs Strategy showdown – and that strategy got its ass handed to it…. again.
like most topics in social theory, I think either side could be argued well. Patriots culture relies heavily on deepseated arrogance and Belichick bribing the entire NFL but I may be a tad biased. However, I will put forward that most cities with big sports cultures usually have a glory era in the past that they rely on, e.g. Cleveland, Buffalo, Miami, etc, so I think it’s more likely that success leads to culture.
like how LISA ‘s success on wall street makes her part of wall street culture!! MIKE MILLER only candidate with delaware success and delaware culture!!
Thanks for stopping by Mike!