Part III: Reinvigorating and Reinventing an Organizational Culture 

In our recent riveting series on business culture and its effects on organizational success, we’ve focused on a few interesting principles to consider. However, we need to drill down a bit more — away from “what works for everyone” and more toward “what works for you.” 

One of the downfalls of the “culture” thing is that business owners end up trying to make their business into some enterprise which they admire. It is good and necessary to identify what is working for peers and competitors, but it is just as important to identify which tactics and strategies will work for your own business. 

I know you’ve been telling all your friends about the New Zealand All Black rugby culture and how it has translated into one of the most successful organizations over the past century and a half. But I have to let you in on a secret (well, it’s not a secret if you follow rugby):   

The mighty All Blacks have failed to win the past two World Cups. In fact, it has been their chief rival, that other great rugby nation, the South Africa Springboks which won in both 2019 and 2023. Interesting, you say, but we are far afield from business culture. 

Not really. The reinvigoration of Springbok rugby in the last six years owes as much to its own organizational culture as does the modest decline in the All Black squad. 

See, the Springbok culture was in listless freefall prior to their renaissance. Despite having perhaps the most talented, most physically-imposing, most athletic player pool in the world, their results were mediocre. They famously lost to Japan in the 2015 World Cup, one of the greatest upsets of all time in the sport. 

But in a short span of time, they re-emerged in 2019 and onward as THE juggernaut in the rugby world, leveraging their resources into a winning culture that exceeded even their already decorated history. So, what happened? 

Reinvigorating / Reinventing a Business Culture 

The Springboks appointed former player, Rassie Erasmus (a great South African name, by the way), and under his leadership, South Africa’s results on the field began to match its resources. Note that these resources are not financial. While plenty of professional rugby opportunities exist in South Africa, perhaps the country’s greatest export is the number and quality of its rugby players – they simply don’t have the money to keep them all. 

How did Rassie do it? 

Play to your Strengths 

This sounds simple, but it is critically necessary for you to understand what your strengths are as an organization. This is perhaps the single most visible pinch point in organizational planning and strategy. Too often, organizations focus their energy and effort on weakness (see below) or tenuous aspirations at the expense of building on their strengths. 

For the Springboks, Coach Rassie stopped trying to emulate the All Blacks or England or France. Instead, he focused on inherent strengths in South African rugby: brutally physical players and exceptional athletes. These he combined with some innovations not familiar to Springbok rugby, but ultimately he identified and explicitly built a program on top of these clear strengths. These weren’t novel or secret; everyone knew about them already. Whereas previous coaches might have said “this is how we play,” Rassie said, “this is who we are – brutally physical and exceptionally athletic.”   

Shore up, but Stop Playing to, Your Weakness  

The other side of the coin remains true, as well. Most organizations spend a vast amount of time and resources on weaknesses within the organization. So much so that the organization, without meaning to, ends up “playing to” their weakness rather than their strength.   

A visible way this happens can be explained in the following example. A non-profit organization (let’s call it Acme, although this is a real example) gathered its leadership for some strategic planning. They went through the standard planning procedures many businesses go through, and the leadership excitedly generated some modestly aspirational goals for the next five years. These goals were achievable…but not for this organization. This was not due to lack of resources (of which there were plenty).   

Simply put, this organization’s aspirational goals revolved around areas in which the organization was weak. In a desire to shore up weaknesses, they ended up actually playing to their weaknesses. They focused their strategic efforts and resources primarily on values and tactics which they didn’t act out well. “Let’s get better at this” turned accidentally into “let’s get distracted by churning our wheels at something we aren’t very good at.” 

But the problem was made worse by the fact that Acme had a distinct, intense strength which peers in its field would have killed for. Acme’s leadership knew about this strength. But they took it for granted. Instead of building out of and on top of this distinct strength, they attempted to build away from it.   

This happens all the time – business owners throw resources at weak areas because they aspire to operate in a certain kind of way. Certainly weaknesses need to be addressed, and it is necessary to dedicate resources to weak areas in your business. But this should never come at the expense of something you do well. Build on your strengths, not away from them. Address your weaknesses as needed, but stop building on a trait or tactic you envy in someone else but don’t do well yourself.  

Final example on this point: I have a 1997 Jeep Cherokee with 300,000 miles on it. It’s been an unbelievable vehicle for recreation and reliability. But I’d hesitate to purchase another Jeep again (and even then, I’d do so with different expectations). When the Jeep brand was bought by Daimler in the 2000s (and then later traded about by various European companies), the quality of the brand tanked. Instead of building on the strength of the traditional product, it innovated in the wrong direction and ceased production of the fabled Cherokee. When that model finally came back into the portfolio, the generational quality of the product was gone and the customers had fled elsewhere. Daimler (and the others) built away from Jeep’s traditional strengths, and the product and brand suffered. 

Innovate the right way 

The Jeep example leads to the last point when establishing a culture. Innovation is necessary. But make sure you are innovating in the right way. If you are building on your strengths, then innovation becomes easier to manage. If you’ve read our previous blog about the famous All Black rugby culture, you’ll remember that, perhaps counter-intuitively, that ethos suggests that the “when on top, innovate” ethos is a necessary part of success. 

Instead of taking the safe path and using the standard formula, successful businesses always look for the edge. Ironically, one reason the All Blacks fell behind the Springboks is precisely this: the ABs had been humming for 2 straight World Cups, and during the next coaching transition, instead of choosing the most innovative club coach in the game, they chose to try the same routine that had gotten them 2 World Cups in a row. They hired one of the assistant coaches from those teams. He’s a good coach, but they did not innovate, and they fell behind their rivals. 

Meanwhile, the Springboks, not typically known for innovation, did something unique: they innovated around their strengths. They asked themselves how they could use their strengths in new ways. I won’t get too much in the weeds, but here’s what they did: they generated several strategies, some riskier than others, which allowed them to take advantage of their sheer brutal physicality. Again, they didn’t try to innovate to be like their peers and competitors. They innovated from their strengths, from those things inherent and productive inside their organization. 

Conclusion 

Creating a successful business culture doesn’t happen with magic, nor does it happen by merely following a formula. It requires the right people in the right places and nailing down processes. It requires considering one’s legacy and purpose. And it requires honest assessment of the company’s strengths and weaknesses while also managing risk and innovation. None of this happens all at once, and none of it happens easily.  But the All Blacks, among many other organizations, show that a successful culture contributes to an organization that punches above its weight and provides for its people.