I had a great time yesterday presenting at the Halogen Software Annual Customer Conference in Washington, DC. The team at Halogen always puts on a fantastic event for their customers and this year's event was no exception.
My presentation, the slides from which I am sharing below, (if the embed doesn't work for you please click the direct link here), was titled Culture-Strategy-Talent: Organizational Rock-Paper-Scissors, and was created from an idea I had a year or so ago about how it has gotten really trendy and popular to focus almost irrationally and singularly on organizational culture at the expense of other really important factors in business success - like strategy and talent. Sure, company culture is important, but it is certainly not the only thing that should be important to HR leaders, and it might not even be the most important thing HR should be concerned about.
Here is the deck, and I will have a couple of closing thoughts below the slides.
I think culture matters. I do. But I also think lots of other things matter too. Like actually having a compelling product/service, an actual market opportunity, the ability to read and react to the competitive environment. And oh yeah, the 'simple' business of finding, attracting, developing, aligning, and retaining the kinds of talented people that are needed to execute that strategy and that create and evolve what we call culture. I think the best organizations and the most successful HR leaders understand this and don't let chasing 'culture' all the time detract from the (I think more important) work of building teams of great, talented people and helping shape organizational strategy (and executing that strategy).
What do you think? Are we too focused on culture these days?
I had a great time with the Halogen customers and staff and many thanks to them for including me in the event.