Culture Eats Strategy: Nucor’s Ken Iverson on Building a Different Kind of Company

including promotion from within, willingness to be innovative, and setting audacious goals. But the key factor was culture.

“Culture has tremendous inertia,” he said. “That’s why it’s culture. It works because it lasts. Culture strangles innovation in the crib.”

we tend to observe financially successful companies, attach attributes (e.g., great leadership, visionary strategy, tight financial controls) to that success, and recommend that others embrace the attributes to achieve their own success.

Culture beats strategy—so much that culture is strategy.

Culture defeats strategy, every time.