Culture Eats Strategy for Breakfast… Unless Generative AI Eats Culture First
There’s a famous saying in business: “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” It’s a reminder that no matter how smart your plan is, if your people, processes, and values don’t line up, that plan is going nowhere.
But now there’s a new player at the table….. Generative AI.
And it’s not just disrupting workflows or supercharging productivity—it’s poking holes in the very fabric of how organizations operate, communicate, and make decisions. In other words, GenAI isn’t just another tool. It’s a culture event.
Traditionally, the culture-strategy dynamic is a slow burn. You roll out a new initiative, and culture either carries it or kills it. Leaders get this—often the hard way. That’s why transformation efforts stall not at the whiteboard, but in the meeting rooms where real humans have real feelings about change.
But here’s the twist with GenAI:
It doesn’t wait for your culture to catch up. It moves fast. It enables individuals. It skips process. It rewrites the rules. You might have a beautiful strategy doc. You might have values plastered on walls. But if your culture isn’t prepared for what GenAI unlocks—it will be bypassed, routed around, or quietly eaten from the inside out.
Signals That GenAI is Outpacing Your Culture
GenAI Use Is Happening Quietly: People are experimenting—but they’re doing it in secret. That’s not innovation. That’s fear of saying the wrong thing.
Policy Is a Roadblock, Not a Runway: If your AI governance slows everything to a crawl, people will go around it. Control without enablement breeds resistance.
Curiosity Lives at the Edges, Not the Center: The most interesting work is happening in rogue teams, side projects, or individual hacks—not in formal initiatives.
Middle Managers Are MIA: The layer that should be enabling change is either silent or stuck. If they aren’t actively coaching and supporting AI use, they’re quietly hoping it goes away.
There’s a Culture of "Ask for Forgiveness, Not Permission": That might sound scrappy and entrepreneurial, but it’s also a sign that your systems aren’t supporting innovation—they’re suffocating it.
So… What Do You Do About It?
Reward experiments, not just outcomes - Progress comes from trying, not just winning.
Build fluency, not fear - Equip people to engage with AI confidently—regardless of role or title.
Train leaders to ask better questions, not just approve policies - Curiosity beats control in a fast-moving environment.
Make the invisible visible - Surface where GenAI is already being used—not to punish, but to learn.
Empower the edge - Give teams the tools and permission to experiment—with lightweight guardrails, not heavy gates.
Create safe containers for discomfort - Adoption isn’t just technical—it’s emotional. Make space for fear, identity shifts, and job security conversations.
Culture Still Wins. But It Has to Evolve.
Generative AI doesn’t eliminate the importance of culture. If anything, it raises the stakes.
Because in this new reality, the best strategy still loses to culture…
unless your culture is brave enough to evolve.
