Culture conundrum

I recently went to an event where the speaker was a VP for a large organization. This person had so much knowledge surrounding culture and how to build efficient teams. He said something that stuck with me. “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” I am still trying to figure out the full depth of the statement. But I know one thing for sure, that without culture you can’t survive as an organization. Having no culture is still a culture. Almost everyone wants to work for Google, Tesla, Amazon or Facebook. Everyone except me that is. Their culture is high production teams with silos. Their team might be a family but at the end of the day if you don’t produce, you are out. And while I respect that, that’s just not for me. Having people I can count on and work together to achieve the goals of the company is more my speed. In contrast, the culture these large organizations result in catty behavior where people will do anything to get ahead. Working for one of those large organization at anytime in your career will open lots of doors for you. If you can survive one year there, you can survive anywhere. Anywhere, as long as you are adaptable. As an employee you have to decide where you want to work. I always say, grass is greener where you water it. That rings true no matter where you are. At the end of the day, you have to water the grass to make it work for you. If you are okay with the stress, working 80 hours a week at work to do a job, that’s great. For me, it was a choice of building my skill-set. To clarify something – I do “work” 70-80 hours a week. 50ish of that goes to my paying job. The other 20-30 hours go into me building my skill-set, learning new things about my industry, helping candidates that I will never be placing. It’s a choice no one else but YOU can make. My question to you is what do you choose?