People over process: A defining characteristic of organizational culture
Topic: Mindset and culture
When I read Marc Evers' post about people vs process I wanted to comment on it, but there doesn't appear to be a way to post a comment on his site. So I'll do it here.

I think Marc misses the point about people vs process. He considers it a false dichotomy. I see it as a characteristic of organizational culture. I never thought the distinction was a subtle one, yet it seems many people don't get it.

IMO the key question is, How does the organization — which comprises people (who have a culture) — react reflexively when things are going badly? Is the tendency to fall back on adherence to formal processes, or to facilitate people's ability to find creative solutions?

The former tendency reflects a belief (possibly implicit) that the thing that causes success is a formal process whose well-defined sequence of actions cannot fail, provided the fallible people in the organization follow the documented steps to the letter. The latter tendency reflects a belief that intelligent people who have a sense of ownership of the problem and who are both accountable and enabled to act on their own best judgment will come up with a solution, provided the fallible formal process is kept out of their way.

Far from a false dichotomy, I see this as the fundamental cultural difference between agile and traditional organizations. Other differences are merely mechanical.