The answer lives in this podcast
Why does culture truly eat strategy for breakfast, lunch, and dinner?
Strategies may look brilliant on paper, but they fail without fixing the operating model, incentives, and company values. Nourhan Farhat extends the classic consulting phrase to "culture eats strategy for breakfast, lunch, and dinner" — because only as an operator at Kareem did the lesson truly click: structure and culture are what make strategy executable.
From observer to operator — when the phrase finally made sense
The saying "culture eats strategy for breakfast" was common inside consulting circles where Farhat spent 10 years at firms including Roland Berger. But it remained abstract — a piece of wisdom heard in boardrooms and deck reviews. The real insight came only after she moved into the corporate world.
When Farhat joined Kareem as Head of Corporate Strategy and Chief of Staff, she transitioned from designing strategies behind the scenes to owning their real-world execution. That operational responsibility revealed the gap between theory and practice: a beautiful strategic plan can collapse entirely if the people, incentives, and decision-making structures inside a company don't align with it. As she explains in the episode, what looked inevitable in consulting documents suddenly looked fragile in a high-stakes business environment.
The three meals: operating model, incentives, and values
Farhat now unpacks the phrase into its component parts. Culture eating strategy for breakfast means the organization's fundamental operating model — how decisions flow, how teams are structured, who owns what — can derail even excellent strategic thinking. Lunch is incentives: if people's bonuses, promotions, and success metrics don't reward the behaviors the strategy requires, they won't execute it. Dinner is values: the unwritten norms, the stories people tell about what the company stands for, the hiring and firing decisions that signal what actually matters.
This insight shaped how Farhat approaches her expanded role at Kareem, which now spans People, Strategy, and Ventures. A point detailed in this podcast is that merging these three functions isn't bureaucratic convenience — it's structural recognition that they must move together. Without it, Strategy proposes while People and Ventures operate in different directions, and the company fragments.
"Culture eats strategy for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Strategies could be great on paper, but unless you really fix the operating model, the incentives, the entire culture of the company, the values of the company, I think that's the make it or break it."
Nourhan Farhat — VP of People, Strategy and Ventures at Kareem. Farhat studied engineering before entering management consulting, where she spent 10 years including time at Roland Berger. She joined Kareem initially as Head of Corporate Strategy and Chief of Staff, before expanding her remit to cover People and Ventures. She describes her transition from consulting to the corporate world as driven by a desire to own deliverables and run a business with real P&L responsibility.
See also
How does Nourhan Farhat manage work-life balance across her demanding professional and personal roles?
Farhat operates with what she calls a personal operating model with explicit boundaries communicated to both her team and her family: she is fully present…
What did Nourhan Farhat learn from her time at Roland Berger that still shapes her leadership today?
Farhat says Roland Berger built resilience and a well-rounded problem-solving character in her, with consultants owning the full arc from defining a problem…
How did Nourhan Farhat come to hold the combined roles of strategy, people, and ventures at Kareem?
Farhat joined Kareem as Head of Corporate Strategy and Chief of Staff. Ventures was added because Kareem's smaller business units — including Kareem Box,…
Key takeaways
- Culture — the operating model, incentives, and values — determines whether strategy succeeds or fails in execution.
- The phrase only became real for Farhat after moving from consulting to operations, where she could see firsthand how elegant strategies collapse without structural alignment.
- Merging People and Strategy functions is structural recognition that culture and strategy must move together, not be managed separately.
- Operating models, incentive systems, and company values are not softer than strategy—they are the decisive layer that determines whether any strategic plan survives contact with reality.