Culture Eats Strategy: Why Transformation Starts with People

Hemang Desai, Chief Human Resource Officer at Ishan Technologies, in an interaction with Higher Education Review, explored the interconnectedness of organizational culture and transformation. Drawing upon more than 27 years of cross-sector HR leadership experience, he described how corporations rely on culture to deliver on their strategic business goals. He demonstrated how culture is key to productivity, how informal influencers can drive meaningful change, and how HR must ensure cultural alignment throughout the employee lifecycle.

Hemang Desai is a seasoned HR professional, business success coach, and leadership mentor with over 27 years of experience. He has led strategic HR initiatives at top organizations like ESSAR, RIL, GSPC, and Torrent. Formerly Global Head–Corporate HR at Panamax Infotech (Bankai Group), he also advised MSMEs and startups before joining Ishan Technologies, known for aligning strategy with execution across diverse talent landscapes.

How can organizations practically measure the strength and alignment of their culture before embarking on transformation initiatives?

Organizational culture establishes the environmental framework that allows a company to flourish, accomplish objectives, and improve efficiency and performance. Every organization has a distinctive culture, and the fit of that culture can be examined by considering whether culture-related objectives support business objectives. For example, if the current culture supports strategic objectives of the organization, such as revenue targets, it can be inferred that the culture is admiringly aligned with the business strategy. Culture ought to be an enabler of outcomes to be achieved, not something separate from business performance.

In what ways can leaders identify whether cultural resistance, rather than strategic flaws, is the root cause of stalled transformation?

Cultural resistance typically arises when an organization's culture is not uniformly practiced or embraced. Strategic shortcomings are often symptomatic of a culture that fails to generate the necessary engagement or followership. In most organizations, culture is strengthened when people feel influenced and inspired by the values and norms it promotes. When a culture is widely accepted and consistently followed, it can often compensate for occasional strategic missteps.

For instance, in a collaborative culture, if a leader makes an error, team members may proactively step in to mitigate the impact. Culture, in this sense, becomes a safety net. However, in today’s fast-paced and dynamic environment, even the best strategies can encounter flaws. In such cases, a strong culture can help absorb the shocks. The opposite, however, is not true—a sound strategy cannot succeed in the face of cultural resistance. If employees are pushing back against the culture, leaders must either address the resistance directly or work to reduce it quickly. Otherwise, even the well-designed strategies will struggle to succeed.

What role do informal networks and influencers within an organization play in shaping cultural change, and how can leaders engage them effectively?

The impact of informal influencers can be incredibly significant, even if it is often unmeasurable, within organizations. Influencers exercise power through veils of recognition, not always as visible as their formal counterparts, but much more powerful.

To utilize this influence, leadership should identify informal influencers in a work community and engage them in informal opportunities to channel their energy and message into positive organizational culture outcomes. Organizations need to ensure that these influencers grow support and social capital in a directed manner to build the culture they want to have.

How can organizations balance the need for strategic direction with empowering employees to shape and own the transformation?

Strategic direction is critical - it can give you clarity, focus, and ensure your operational efforts are moving toward the defined goals as quickly as possible. Typically, today’s workers have very clear personal goals. Organizations need to help align the employees’ work aspirations with the strategic ones defined by the organization’s mission. This may mean working with employees to fine-tune their aspirations, bringing them in-line with action items that will help the organization change.

In this regard, human resource management has shifted to aspiration management. By identifying and harnessing employee aspirations especially those employees with high potential and high performance against their peers, HR can direct powerful transformational changes in step with strategic goals.

How can HR and talent development functions embed cultural alignment into hiring, onboarding, and continuous learning processes?

Talent development is a key facet of Human Resources and starts with recruitment. While recruiting involves evaluating qualifications, experiences, and skills, someone is not really "talent" until they demonstrate the core competencies required for the role. Talent development is an ongoing process that also includes cultural assimilation. Success of the Team Member is defined not only by skills, knowledge, and attitude, but also by how well they fit in the organization. Making sure that fit occurs is a huge responsibility for HR. HR also has a great opportunity (and obligation) to create onboarding and professional development learning experiences that reflect both opportunities for growth and the values of the organization.

What practical steps can organizations take to ensure that values and behaviors, not just slogans, become part of daily work life?

Organizational values need to be consistently demonstrated and reinforced in all actions. It is important to notice that leaders lead by example and live by their organization's values. For example, if honesty and integrity are the organization's values with slogans and communication reaching all employees and leaders still operate with some unethical actions even at a minor level, it can undermine credibility and trust.

Leaders must practice what they preach as that is the best way to incorporate values and behaviors into the culture of the organization because otherwise the values may be treated as theoretical without the ability to influence employee behavior or the workplace culture.

How can leaders maintain cultural consistency across geographically or functionally diverse teams during transformation?

Cultural alignment can be achieved by developing leaders consistently across all locations and functions to accept and embrace the organization's cultural values. Just as citizens of a country may identify each other as fellow countrymen despite regional differences, employees may be able to identify each other based upon a few common organizational values.

If leaders have a unified voice, and are modeling their behaviors consistently, there will be a likelihood of cultural alignment at all levels and locations. During times of change, it is essential that shared values take precedence over operational differences; otherwise, the organization risks cultural fragmentation.

What are the early warning signs that a transformation initiative is misaligned with the company’s true cultural DNA?

Transformation is an on-going work-in-progress, not a destination. It requires organizations to constantly develop while staying tethered to established core values. As we stay grounded, we must establish milestones and measure progress as we go. The non-negotiable aspects of cultural DNA and fundamental value systems need to remain non-negotiable, even if that leads to some short-term losses in terms of business.

At the same time, we must not let these values become detrimental to the overall business - in the right balance. If we are continually not meeting milestones or results are straying from strategic goals, those are the early signs. In this case, it is time for a thorough review to discover the problem and take steps to fix it in order to keep us on course and maintain momentum.

Would you like to give any message to our leaders?

To be a Successful leader, one must recognize that personal success is inherently tied to cultural alignment within the organization. Much like acquiring citizenship in a new country requires embracing its norms and values regardless of one's personal beliefs-leaders must adapt to the organizational culture to truly thrive.

An organization can only succeed when there is minimal disparity between a leader’s personal value system and the values practiced within the business. It is the leader’s responsibility to bridge this gap. A leader's responsibility is to eliminate disconnect between personal beliefs and organization values, and create a foundation for long-term success and a healthy work culture.