Culture eats process for lunch is a phrase originally attributed to the famed management guru, Peter Drucker, and it’s pretty much true in any business. Having the right company culture will improve organizational efficiency far more than any process ever will. 

The problem, of course, is that culture is a pretty elusive thing to try to create. You can’t just call a meeting and tell your staff “From now on, we’re going to have a great corporate culture here!” That’s not likely to work all that well. 

We’re in the software business, so process is important to us: development process, source code management, testing process, deployment process, etc.. But none of that is a replacement for having a company culture of taking pride in the work that we produce. A desire to be part of a team developing genuinely top-notch software will catch far more bugs than process ever will. 

I don’t have a magic recipe for creating a positive culture within organizations, although as I wrote last week I do think that clearly articulating the “why” is an important component. 

Every organization will develop a culture. One of the most important jobs of a leader is try to steer that culture in a positive direction.