The phrase “Culture eats strategy for breakfast” is widely attributed to Peter Drucker, although there is no reliable evidence that he actually said or wrote it. Whether or not he did, it makes sense; a strategy without a culture is homeless, doomed to wander the halls of business schools in search of somewhere to belong. Culture is one of those words that can be appropriated to serve whatever purpose we require; has a comforting lack of definition that makes it malleable in everyday use, and an area that I think we become defensively, wilfully blind to, given that it shapes just about every action that we take.
The word has its root in the Latin, colere. and carries a number of meanings: to till, to dwell in, to attend to and to worship. Cicero saw it as a living thing. His idea of cultura animi treats the mind as ground that requires tending, with philosophy as the tool. The root sense is that culture is not a thing, but rather an activity of something living over time that produces …