I recently
wrote about the critical role firm culture plays in the success or failure of marketing initiatives. In that same vein, I want to draw your attention to a
recent post on Tom Peters' blog on the same topic. Juli Ann Reynolds (President and CEO of the Tom Peters Company) writes that:
A beautifully crafted strategy can fail when the employees in various divisions within an organization clash. Logically, we think that strategy should drive behavior, but, in reality, it's the culture—underlying norms, values, belief systems—that dictates how effectively people work together.
The comments made to his post re-enforce the notion that culture is key. Juli Ann ends her thoughtful post with this question:
How do you change this and bring culture into alignment with strategy?
In my view, the issue is more acute in the professional services field where the "herding cats"/"you're not the boss of me" mentality causes people to live in silos and feel free to change or not as they see fit. So the question is there for all of us:
How can we cause the culture of our firms to change in a manner to allow our marketing programs to succeed on a grand scale?
