Things That Won’t Change

Culture Eats Strategy. Things That Won’t Change (And What to Do About It)

There are lessons in construction leadership that hit hard once you hear them but we rarely talk about them openly. One of the biggest? Some things just won’t change, no matter how good your strategy is. And if you don’t account for that, you’ll burn out fast.

Culture vs. Strategy: Why We Keep Banging Our Heads Against the Wall

Let me give you a real example. I once watched a preconstruction team completely refuse to do early material coordination. They had the time, they had the information, but they wouldn’t act. Tile, switchgear, lighting none of it got ordered. Why?

Because “that’s not our job.”

This wasn’t about logic or bandwidth. It was about culture. These folks were conditioned by habit, pride, and past experience. So instead of placing the order, they punted the work downstream… to a team that didn’t even exist yet.

This is where I always come back to the phrase:
“Culture eats strategy for breakfast.”

You can roll out the best strategy in the world TAKT, Lean, Last Planner but if you ignore the cultural wiring of your team, it’s not going to stick.

You Can’t Change Nature

This isn’t a knock on anyone. It’s just the reality of human behavior.

• Try asking a team raised in secrecy to be radically transparent. Not going to happen overnight.
• Ask a crew trained to avoid conflict to challenge each other in meetings? Good luck.
• Expect Americans who were raised to value independence to self-police without external accountability? You better have strong systems in place.

These aren’t flaws they’re traits. And the sooner we stop fighting them, the more effective we become.

So What Do We Do?

Here’s the shift:
Don’t force culture to adapt to your strategy. Design your strategy around the culture.

Ask yourself: What will actually work with this team? Then build from there.

Some practical moves I’ve seen work:

• Hire your project team earlier if precon won’t plan for materials.
• Give them an intern to handle the “button-clicking” tasks they resist.
• Outsource certain functions to sidestep cultural blocks.
• Create systems with built-in external accountability especially in cultures that resist internal policing.
• Layer your systems into the natural rhythms people already follow.

You don’t fight nature. You partner with it.

Final Thought: Move the Rock, Don’t Push It Uphill

Some parts of culture and personality just won’t budge not the way you hope, anyway. Great leaders aren’t the ones who push harder. They’re the ones who notice what won’t change… and still find a way to move forward.

We can’t bulldoze behavior. But we can build around it.

Key Takeaway:
Culture always wins. If you want your strategy to succeed, stop trying to change people. Instead, design your systems to fit the people. That’s where real leadership lives.