Culture Eats Playbooks for Breakfast

We’ve all heard the phrase “culture eats strategy for breakfast.” But I believe culture eats playbooks for breakfast too.

I’m working with an early-stage startup that’s deep in firefighting mode. They’re hustling to put out fires, close deals, and banish product bugs. Naturally, they’re eager to build out customer value journeys, onboarding processes, and customer success frameworks. But here’s the hard truth: it’s not the right time.

Why? Because the company culture can’t support it.

Culture is what people do when no one’s watching

Culture isn’t what’s written on walls, websites, or in mission statements; it’s what people do when no one’s watching. Company culture shapes how people behave, how teams solve problems, and how they collaborate – or don’t. It also determines whether new processes, systems, and tools (yes, even AI) take root or die on the vine.

I can help companies design and deploy the most orchestrated of onboarding processes, customer-centric playbooks, and value-based customer journeys, but if the underlying culture doesn’t support them, they become shelfware: just slides and docs gathering dust.

What this looks like in the real world

Here are a few real-world examples where I see this play out:

• “Fix the Customer Success team!” That’s what leadership often demands when churn spikes. But when I dig in, I discover systemic issues leadership hasn’t addressed, usually upstream from the Customer Success teams: Sales closing poor-fit deals to hit quotas, no clear ownership of the customer experience, and leadership not modelling accountability. A new playbook won’t fix these.

• Turf wars. There’s massive opportunity to work cross-functionally for the customer’s benefit, but instead of teaming up, departments blame each other and protect their turf. When the focus is on playing defense, playbooks just add to the noise.  

• Siloed teams.  Without shared priorities and metrics, there’s no incentive to collaborate, and even the best-designed systems fall apart.
  

There are deeper issues to resolve before playbooks deliver impact to the business bottom line in each of these situations.

Before you roll out another tool or framework (including AI)

Before you invest in another tool, launch a new AI initiative, or revamp your onboarding flow, pause and ask:

• Does our culture support the change we want?

• Are we rewarding the behaviors that bring our playbooks and processes to life?

• Are our leaders modeling ownership and accountability?
  

Because at the end of the day, no process, platform, or AI tool is going to fix what’s broken.

When culture and playbooks work together

When culture does support proactive processes, everything changes. Here’s what this looks like:

• Aligned Leadership: Executives model the behaviors they want to see, ownership, transparency, and collaboration.

• North Star Metrics: Teams rally around common outcomes like NRR, adoption, or time to value. They work together to reach common goals.

• Psychological Safety: People speak up, suggest improvements, and raise issues early. There’s no fear of blame.

• Clear Ownership: Every initiative has someone truly accountable.
  

In this environment, playbooks aren’t theoretical. They’re living, breathing guides used to deliver meaningful impact for you and your customers.

Culture not there yet? Start with simple experiments

What if your culture doesn’t support the customer-centric approaches you crave? Rather than dismantling long existing silos and persuading distracted executives, sometimes, the best approach is to start with small, incremental changes that target specific areas of improvement. Bypass roadblocks with targeted, data-driven Customer Success experiments and then share the results with other teams and leaders once you know the impact. Read my article on conducting experiments to drive organizational change and benefit from experiments within your organization.

Ready to get real?

Too often, leaders expect new playbooks, processes, or tools will “fix” churn without addressing systemic issues. To succeed, make sure you align internal teams on the metrics that matter, drive behavioral changes, and implement the right systems, so your playbooks and processes don’t just exist, they thrive. Because let’s be real: your customers don’t benefit from the playbooks you hope to implement. They benefit from the ones integrated into the daily life of your company to ensure your customers thrive.  

If you are feeling stuck, let’s talk. I offer practical, honest assessments that cut through the noise and identify what to tackle now, what to phase in next, and how to build a culture to drive results for both you and your customers.

DONNA WEBER is the world’s leading expert in customer onboarding. For more than two decades, she has helped high-growth startups and established enterprises turn new and existing customers into loyal champions. Her award-winning book is Onboarding Matters: How Successful Companies Transform New Customers Into Loyal Champions. Learn more at donnaweber.com.