When Culture Feels Broken, Look at Strategy First
Image of word “culture” crumbling like shattered concrete. Atop the crumbling word are aimless-seeming human silhouettes.
A note from this author/coach/”consultant”/strategist/impatient changemaker:
As the calendar year comes to a close, I’ve been reflecting on my 2025 leadership coaching practice. (Didn’t know we do leadership coaching? We don’t really advertise it, but provide it on an as-needs basis.) Both my clients and myself often remark how the insights we arrive at should be more widely shared, but a coaching space is where leaders get vulnerable, admit mistakes, work at doing better… it’s often too vulnerable a context and inviting others in would disrupt the stasis. But thankfully, I take notes, and I’m a notorious synthesizer, and so I’ve distilled many of this year’s insights into this blog.
In earlier blogs this year, you’ve heard me comment on the need our people have for care and connection, and that these things aren’t nice-to-haves, but rather essential in times of uncertainty, constraint, tension, and outright crisis. You’ve also heard me nudge you toward a more gracious understanding of your peoples’ behaviours, suggesting that collective anxiety is at the root of unhelpful (and even outright bad) behaviour. Today’s blog, instead of being an exploration of a single issue, brings you 5 lessons starting with one that I hope you will reflect on over the winter break. It has to do with the different between a true culture problem, and a strategy problem masquerading as a culture problem. And in the new year, we will be sharing a diagnostic tool you can use to discern the difference in your own context, but for now, let’s dive into my dispatch from the coach’s notes…
Lesson 1: When Culture Carries the Weight of Missing Strategy
“Do we have a culture problem?”
Sometimes that question is asked with fear and trepidation. Sometimes it’s more of a resigned statement, punctuated with frustration and exhaustion.
The symptoms seem clear: there are silos, tension between colleagues, protectiveness over projects and resources, not to mention fatigue. People are feeling stretched thin and disconnected. Getting folks to collaborate is like pulling teeth.
Although these behavioural indicators seem to be pointing in the direction of a culture problem, and you wouldn’t be blamed for making that assumption, but most of the time, culture isn’t the real issue.
It’s carrying the weight of something else.
In disfunctioning/disfunctional organizations – especially mission-driven ones – what shows up as a culture problem is actually evidence of a strategy gap. When direction is unclear, culture absorbs the strain. People do their best to compensate, and the symptoms get mislabeled as morale issues, trust breakdowns, or resistance to change.
But this doesn’t mean your culture is failing (phew!)
It means it’s compensating.
(Have you ever gotten a sore back, but it’s your knee that’s out of whack?)
Teams become siloed not because they don’t care, but because collaboration feels optional when priorities aren’t clear and shared. Initiatives multiply because saying no feels arbitrary. Decisions get interpreted emotionally: Why them? Why now? Why this? Leaders find themselves over-explaining after the fact, trying to calm reactions that feel disproportionate but are actually predictable.
When there’s no shared logic for how choices are made (which is what a strategy provides), people fill the gaps with stories. And in high-pressure environments, those stories tend toward fear.
Culture takes the hit because it’s the most visible place where confusion shows up. But the root issue is often upstream: a lack of clear, shared strategic priorities.
Lesson 2: The Initiative Trap - Mission + Projects ≠ Strategy
“But we have a strategy.”
Do you? Do you really?
This is one of the most difficult conversations I have with leaders because far too many institutions don’t have a truly useful and impactful strategy. Far too many institutions have strategic plans designed by few too insights (or the wrong insights) and few too people. By the time some degree of buy-in is achieved, the laundry list of priorities and goals are no longer as relevant (because they aren’t designed to be agile to shifting contexts), and so they atrophy – they sour and shrivel like dried grapes on the vine – and the plan gets relegated to a dusty shelf until the next planning phase comes around.
So why are these conversations about strategy difficult? Because most mission-driven organizations are not short on purpose. They generally know why they exist and they care a lot about having an impact in the world through their work. They’re also not short on effort. There’s no shortage of projects, pilots, committees, or working groups. And so many leaders just wish their people could be more strategic in their work. And so there’s this critical gap:
[SHINY IMPORTANT AUDACIOUS WORLD-CHANGING MISSION/VISION EVERYONE CARES ABOUT]
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
THE WORK - IE:
[PROJECTS] [PROGRAMS] [INITIATIVES] [PARTNERSHIPS] [RESEARCH] [TEACHING]
What’s missing is the middle layer.
Strategy lives between mission and activity. It’s the set of 3–5 priorities that translate purpose into directional focus. Without that middle layer, everything feels important. Work expands to fill every available gap. Leaders struggle to say no without seeming dismissive. Staff chase relevance, spreading themselves thin across too many efforts.
It’s like having a powerful engine with no steering wheel. Lots of motion. Very little direction.
When priorities are clear, collaboration becomes necessary rather than optional. Decisions feel grounded rather than personal. Culture stabilizes. Why? Not because people suddenly behave differently, but because the system gives them something solid to orient around. So when you ask people to be more strategic, what you’re asking them to do is to align their work (ie. projects, programs, initiatives, partnerships, research, teaching) to the 3-5 priority areas that we’ve agreed* are most likely to advance our mission with the greatest speed and impact.
*[SIDEBAR re: “we’ve agreed” - skip if you want to
1. Strategic priorities should never be determined by: one committee / one group of leaders / one leader / one committee + consultants + leaders.
2. Strategic priorities should be synthesized from input (data) from as many stakeholders as possible that you can wrangle to bring their voice to the table! I mean: faculty, staff, students, funders, ecosystem/industry partners, alumni, community-at-large… anyone who stands to benefit from your success.
3. Strategic priorities should be reverse-engineered from the greatest challenges to your institution achieving its mission (which you learn from your broad consultation).
4. Your strategic priorities are the opportunities that are the reverse of your greatest challenges.
5. If your strategic priorities were shaped by voices inside your walls, your strategic priorities cannot be trusted. “But we did a SWOT analysis!” That still doesn’t count.
One of the most effective strategic shifts is deceptively simple.
In internal meetings, people default to what they know best: their own work, their own deliverables, their own urgency. Expertise narrows the field of vision.
A well-timed pause can change that.
What are our stakeholders actually experiencing right now?
What’s standing in their way—not what are we delivering, but what are they navigating?
This reframes strategy away from internal activity and toward external reality. It’s also why defining priorities exclusively from inside the organization so often leads to rework later. Even the most capable teams share the same institutional lens.
Listening comes first. Short, open questions. Broad reach. Synthesis into themes. Only then does internal judgment, language, and ownership make sense.
You don’t workshop your way into relevance.
You listen your way there.
Lesson 3: Why Transparency Becomes Non-Negotiable in Anxious Systems
“I’m so tired of having to explain everything.”
I’m sorry. Get ready to explain again. And again. And again. You’re a leader. That’s your job.
Perhaps I sound less than empathetic on this one, but don’t get me wrong. I understand it’s frustrating to feel like you’re a broken record. Why should you have to explain the thing you made very clear at the faculty meeting back on September 17th and then again at the council roundtable on December 3rd? Simply, because in periods of uncertainty, silence is rarely neutral. It’s interpreted as threat and the silence gets filled one way or another: Are there job cuts coming? What’s going to happen to my program? Are they going to cap salaries? Is that initiative getting axed? Are they going to fill that empty position or will they redistribute the load?
In contexts where uncertainty reigns, transparency stops being a leadership style and becomes a leadership practice (and a superpower).
You don’t need to overshare or narrative every internal debate. But you should be in the habit of consistently naming four things:
Here’s what we know.
Here’s what we don’t know.
Here’s what’s constrained—and why.
Here’s when we’ll update you.
This kind of transparency doesn’t eliminate anxiety, but it prevents something worse: the vacuum where rumors grow. It reduces the cognitive load on teams who are already stretched. It signals respect. And it stabilizes culture by making uncertainty visible instead of ominous.
In anxious systems, transparency isn’t optional. It’s maintenance.
Lesson 4: Celebration Without Alienation
“We secured some funding!”
“That’s amazing! What will you do to celebrate?”
“Oh, well, if I celebrate it will sound like I’m patting myself on the back for securing the funding.”
Sure, even positive moments can misfire when culture is strained, but celebrating wins really matters.
(Note to you-know-who-you-are: Are you writing in your Little Book of Wins yet?)
But when recognition reads as leadership self-congratulation, or ignores the broader context of instability, it can quietly erode trust. People don’t resent success. They resent being erased from it.
The difference is almost always in the framing.
“Hero Narratives” – one team, one leader, one initiative – can land as tone-deaf in environments where others are carrying invisible weight, but “Relay Narratives” do something else. They connect wins to collective effort. They acknowledge hardship and progress in the same breath. They show how success protects future capacity rather than spotlighting individual achievement.
Celebrate like a leader: tell the truth, then honor the team.
Lesson 5: Leading in the In-Between
“But without strategic clarity today, what do we do in the meantime?”
There’s a particular kind of discomfort leaders face when priorities aren’t yet clear.
Leaders feel frustrated when their people seem directionless. People want direction, after all. Pressure builds to decide quickly, or decisions get made on the individual or team level. The absence of a map can feel like failure.
Personally, I’m a highly impatient person, and so my inclination is to put everything else on pause until a clear and kick-a$$ strategy is in place. But, reluctantly, I must admit, not every moment calls for acceleration. And that kind of pause is not at all practical when you’re running a College or Faculty.
And so these are the seasons when the most responsible move is to name a discovery phase—without stopping the work already underway. Leaders who do this well give language to the pause:
“We’re listening before placing new bets.”
“This is a moment for inquiry, not expansion.”
“We’re mid-work, but slowing decisions so we get this right.”
Curiosity, framed clearly, is not delay, it’s not spinning wheels, it’s not limbo or avoidance. It’s leadership.
And remember, you’ll get there! Momentum isn’t about speed. It’s about alignment.
When leaders design clarity instead of urgency, practice transparency instead of silence, and repair instead of retreat, culture stops carrying strategy’s weight. It starts amplifying it.
Leadership, in the end, is about getting the moment right.
And when leaders do that consistently, momentum follows.