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

The main problem Rosenzweig describes in the book is that attributes we tend to think cause great performance (culture, leadership, etc.) are often just things that are attributed to companies we already know are high-performing. There’s a Halo around everything they do. How many current high-fliers would ever be described as having a bad cult... See more

The problem with most management, leadership, and business books is that many of them harp on the same self-evident points, overconfident in the usefulness of their prescriptions for would-be imitators. They tend to vastly underestimate the role of circumstance, luck, the nature of completion, and the effects of scale, among other things.

In the final analysis, Nucor probably didn’t have any core attributes that were unavailable to its competitors. It simply made better choices and was more fanatical about sticking to them. The resulting success was deserved. This is why culture eats strategy.

"The company might develop the same computer program six times. But, the advantages of local autonomy are so great, we think it’s worth it.” Any of you who have worked in a modern corporation know how unusual this mentality is. Who would allow the same company to develop the same software six times? Why not increase knowledge sharing and syner... See more