Rising Tide Blog

“Culture eats strategy for breakfast“. Words made famous by Ford Motors CEO Mark Fields, but initially uttered by Peter Drucker. 

It sounds simple in theory, let’s work on our culture & everything will follow. But what is culture? If you live & breathe footy like I do, you would’ve heard Hawthorn talk about their “family club” culture, or more recently Richmond coach Damien Hardwick say “how proud I am of our culture, how we always manage to cope during tough times”.  

I am still not close to knowing what it actually means, so I locked in half an hour with Leading Teams facilitator Marti Harkin, to delve in to things a bit deeper.  

Rising Tide has been working with Marti & Leading Teams for five years – working on our working environment, communication & relationships has helped us navigate some noisy times in the last few years. 

A couple of things I have learnt along the way;

• Every business needs a clear purpose, it helps with decision making (and words written on a wall that no one follows doesn’t count)
• Improvement is a journey; you have good days & bad days – you need to strap yourself & enjoy the ride
• Just because you think you are a good communicator, doesn’t mean everyone else agrees

I am hopeful this chat might help a few others on their workplace journey. 

Here are some of the ideas we cover off, with corresponding times in the video to make it a little easier;