How to Maintain Your Company’s Culture as You Scale

Your company is growing fast, but you don’t want everything to change.

One thing you want to preserve is your culture.

But how do you maintain your company’s culture while scaling your business?

Eric Roman, joyFULL People visionary, shares his three rules for sustaining your company’s culture as your company grows and his advice for how to approach culture as a growth-oriented leader.

Press play to watch the video or keep reading to discover the best ways to preserve your culture.

Rule 1: Culture is a full-time job

As a leader in your company, many different parts of the business require your time and energy. Culture is one of these. But it’s often not the most exciting aspect, and leaders prefer to put their energy into other areas like adding new locations, revenue streams, or driving more profitability.

It’s difficult to equate your culture to direct benefits or ROI, unlike these other areas of your business. But your ideal culture doesn’t happen by accident. It’s something you need to put effort into developing.

Whether you can measure the outcomes of your culture or not, if you want to achieve your ideal company culture, you need to treat it as a full-time job. This means committing to developing and maintaining your culture, even as you scale.

There will always be a culture at your company. It’s up to you to take it in the direction that’s best for your business.

Rule 2: Live your vision and your values

Culture is a measure of consistency. Only when culture is consistently repeated throughout your organization can it be truly embedded in your company. But how can you consistently establish culture?

Firstly, all leaders must live and breathe culture. One of the most common failings is when businesses put their culture into words and display it in their workplace – and it ends there. To integrate culture into your company, you need to reflect it in your choices repeatedly.

When you live your culture, every person within your company champions your vision and your values. You make hiring decisions, reward and recognize people, and so much more based on your company's values and vision.

To maintain culture, your organization’s rhythms need to be consistent. This means everyone must live your vision and values, including CEOs, founders, leadership, development teams, or anyone responsible for others in your company.

Once you let culture lead your decisions, you also have to be vocal about it. In fact, you need to be a broken record! It’s common knowledge that you need to repeat a message seven times to a person before they learn and remember it. Now apply this to your company culture.

You should take every chance you can to repeat your culture’s messages to your people. Each time you get together, consider how you can reiterate your vision, values, or the cornerstones of your culture. Some great opportunities are your:

• Daily huddle

• Weekly company meetings

• Individual check-ins

• Quarterly addresses

• Executive leadership meetings

Being aligned on your vision and values is a fantastic place to start from with any relationship in your business. Use these to set the stage for one-on-one discussions and make sure all your team members are on the same page.

Rule 3: Embrace change

When we multiply, so do our problems. Scaling your business will expose weaknesses throughout your company, inside your operational model, and your culture. Take this as an opportunity to learn.

Try not to get frustrated about repeatedly instilling culture within your company. This means that your business is evolving. It’s part of the journey to have your culture tested or scaling breaks it altogether! Expect it to happen and appreciate the growth that comes with it.

Culture is not a one-time event, or a phrase that’s written on a wall. Achieving your ideal culture is a full-time job. Your company leaders need to reinforce your culture consistently, even when it gets challenged. Perhaps you could even take these challenges as an opportunity to develop your culture further.

It’s important to recognize that culture is one of the most memorable parts of any company. Looking back on your previous roles, teams, and relationships with businesses, what do you remember most? You might miss the culture more than anything else – or it may be the reason you left.

Your culture influences everyone who comes into contact with your company. So, as you scale and make decisions about growth and developing your culture, consider the impression you want to leave and how you’re going to make it.

No matter how big your business is, your culture is important – and it’ll only become more important as you grow! To learn more about creating the ideal culture for your business, join the joyFULL People Signature Program: www.joyfullpeople.com