'Culture Eats Strategy for Breakfast': Ibn Khaldun and Fostering an Environment of Excellence.

Modern life dazzles with its platitudes of efficiency, innovation, and strategy. Corporations invest in consultants, governments draft policies, and organisations construct futures in detail. Despite this feverish planning, many workplaces and institutions remain brittle and society, restless. This disconnect is glaring, we produce endless tactics but seldom propagate people of depth, integrity, and excellence.

Recently, I heard Ustadh Hisham Abu Yusuf recommend reading The Muqaddimah by Ibn Khaldun. This masterpiece is not just a study of history, but a mirror for our own times. Ibn Khaldun tells us that civilisations rise not because of proper planning but crucially because of the character of their people. The lasting engine of progress is not policy but virtue, not structure but sincerity, not merely rules but the culture that ensconces them.

Ibn Khaldun does not dismiss the importance of strategy. He acknowledges them but remains insistent that the real substance of success lies in fostering people who work with ihsaan, excellence, and izza, dignity, honour, and self-respect. When such people exist, even imperfect strategies succeed. When they are absent, even seemingly infallible strategies disintegrate.

He writes, “The strength of a dynasty consists in its people. When the people become used to luxury and ease they lose the habits of courage and labour and so their dynasty collapses”. Luxury and complacency corrode not only dynasties but modern companies, schools, and governments alike. We have built environments that chase convenience, comfort, and short term gain, but in the process we have neglected to build people who find dignity in labor and meaning in service.

This is where the insights of our tradition can breathe new life into how we organise work and society today. The Quran states, “Indeed, Allah does not change the condition of a people until they change what is in themselves” (Quran 13:11). Real transformation begins inwardly. It begins with forming a culture where honesty, perseverance and compassion are expected. The Prophet PBUH taught, “The most beloved of deeds to Allah are those done regularly, even if small.” The lesson is simple, the future is built not on slogans but on steady, excellent work performed with sincerity.

Ibn Khaldun saw this cycle centuries ago. The real strength of societies lies in the quality of their people, in the unseen cultures of ihsaan and izza.

This lesson should move us deeply today. Do we measure success only by profit, efficiency, or policy compliance? Or do we measure it by whether our workplaces and institutions cultivate people who are upright, hardworking, and trustworthy? Imagine the transformation if organisations, or even schools, prized character as much as skill, and if communities honoured effort as much as outcomes. The Prophet PBUH formed such a generation. Their resources were scarce, their strategies modest, yet they carried within themselves discipline, faith, and dignity. Their character made their victories inevitable.

Ibn Khaldun’s brilliance was to draw this truth out of history itself. He reminds us that civilisations are undone not by a lack of plans but by the erosion of values. Once a people lose their dignity, their courage and their appetite for hard work, decline follows. The corollary is equally true, a people who act with distinction can revive even the most fragile institutions.

So, the challenge before us is greater than adopting better strategies. It is about reshaping culture. It is about workplaces where employees are valued not just for output but for integrity, about schools that imbue perseverance and humility alongside knowledge, about communities where service and dignity are lived realities rather than sloganeering. This is Ibn Khaldun demanding us to shift from the superficial elegance of plans to the deeper substance of our human capabilities.

May Allah grant us the clarity to see this truth and the strength to act upon it. May we strive to be people who embody excellence and dignity.

For it is not strategy alone that sustains civilisations but the culture of good people, whose every act is marked by striving for excellence. If we cultivate such people, our plans will succeed. If we neglect this, no plan will save us.

Faithfully, Issa.