"If culture eats strategy for breakfast, then belonging is what serves it up." In today’s competitive landscape, businesses must prioritize creating a culture of belonging to ensure the success of their strategies. A workforce that feels valued and included is the key to achieving strategic goals and driving long-term success.
In every business, there is a time of year when the corporate strategy takes center stage. Teams get together to discuss how to improve, transform and grow their business and what strategies are going to achieve them. However, despite our best efforts and collective brain power, the unsung hero that ensures strategy’s success is culture—and more specifically, a sense of belonging. Peter Drucker famously said, "Culture eats strategy for breakfast," but I think, belonging is what serves it up. Fostering an environment where every individual feels they belong can amplify the success of strategy creation, implementation, and long-term sustainability.
While much attention has been given to the equity, diversity and inclusion portion of EDIB, belonging is the crucial piece that often gets overlooked. It’s not enough to just have diverse perspectives in the room; people need to feel welcomed, valued, and empowered to contribute. Without this sense of belonging, even the best strategies can fall flat.
A study published in Harvard Business Review found that workplaces with a high sense of belonging experience a 56% increase in job performance, a 50% drop in turnover risk, and a 75% reduction in sick days. This underscores how belonging directly contributes to an organization's ability to innovate and execute its strategy effectively. When team members feel safe and included, they’re more likely to take risks, voice new ideas, and challenge the status quo—all critical components for strategic success.
Strategy development requires a wide range of insights and perspectives. When employees feel like they belong, they are more likely to bring their full selves to work, contributing ideas and solutions that might otherwise go unspoken.
Liane Davey, a leading expert in team dynamics and strategy creation, emphasizes the importance of having a diversity of experience, styles and perspectives around the strategy table, not just executives, when creating the strategic plan. When everyone feels a sense of belonging, their contributions towards these goals become richer and more aligned with the broader strategic objectives. For instance, in a technology firm, ensuring a culture of belonging can lead to a strategy that reflects a wider range of user needs, creating more comprehensive solutions, services, and optimization of internal processes.
Creating a strategy is only half the battle—successful implementation is where many organizations struggle. Belonging is critical here too. A strategy, no matter how well-crafted, will falter if employees don’t feel engaged and motivated to execute it. A culture of belonging fosters this engagement by encouraging employees to take ownership of their roles within the strategy – especially if they’ve been included early on.
When team members feel they belong, they’re not just completing tasks—they’re contributing to a collective goal. This heightened sense of purpose can lead to better collaboration, increased accountability, and ultimately, a more seamless implementation of strategic initiatives.
The long-term success of any strategy depends on an organization’s ability to adapt and grow. A sense of belonging ensures that this adaptability is baked into the fabric of the company and is not just talked about during EDIB updates and initiatives. When employees feel valued, they’re more likely to stay with the company, contributing to institutional knowledge and continuity, both of which are essential for evolving strategies over time and building enduring success.
Moreover, belonging encourages continuous feedback loops, where employees feel comfortable sharing their observations and suggestions for improvement. This ongoing dialogue ensures that strategies remain relevant and responsive to changes in the marketplace, making the company more resilient and agile in the face of disruption.
When team members don’t feel like they belong, it can directly undermine the effectiveness of your strategy. Whether it’s in the initial stages of development, the execution phase, or evaluating outcomes, disengaged or disconnected team members pose a risk to your goals. Recognizing these signs early is essential to maintaining a cohesive team committed to achieving strategic success.
Here are five key indicators that people on your team may not feel they belong, along with practical steps to course correct:
Recognizing the signs of disengagement is just the beginning. To ensure your strategy succeeds, leaders must take intentional steps to rebuild a sense of belonging within the team:
By identifying and addressing these signs early, leaders can ensure that every team member feels connected to the strategy, leading to better collaboration, more innovative solutions, and stronger execution. When everyone feels they belong, your strategy is more likely to succeed.
In today’s business environment, strategy alone isn’t enough. Companies that prioritize belonging as part of their culture are setting themselves up for long-term success. When employees feel they belong, they’re more engaged, more innovative, and more committed to achieving the company’s strategic goals.
If culture eats strategy for breakfast, then belonging is what serves it up—ensuring that your strategic initiatives are executed with the full energy and commitment of a motivated, diverse, and united workforce.
This post is part of our ongoing EDIB Perspectives series offering insights and reflections on equity, diversity, inclusion and belonging (EDIB) topics from a business perspective, brought to you by leaders and colleagues at Stratford. Through this series, we aim to share experiences, challenges, and successes in fostering an inclusive corporate culture.
With a more personal tone, the goal of these posts is to offer diverse perspectives on how individuals at Stratford authentically live and embody the principles of EDIB in their daily lives and work.