Maintaining Great Company Culture during High Growth Periods

Getting investors or choosing to invest more in your business is very exciting. It usually means your business is doing well enough to warrant a high growth rate based on the confidence in your expanding customer base. It's something to be celebrated but it's also important to think about growth at your company in a strategic way. A high growth period for a company is anytime a company is increasing quickly in size. For enterprises, this can mean growth of 20% or more for over 3 years. Since the growth rate depends on the size of your company, this looks different for every business. When you enter a high growth phase in your business, the choices you make are crucial to the future success of your company.

It's easy to assume that because you were successful during the last phase of your company, you will automatically be successful as it gets bigger.  This is not true. Each phase of your business requires different processes, leadership skills and talent. This is often why leadership changes as a company grows because investors want to ensure the company has the right leadership for the next phase of the company's growth. 

One of the most important things to consider during a high growth phase is the company culture because adding a multitude of new people to your company means that you could have a completely new culture within a year. Each person brings in their own unique point of view and belief system and while diversity of thought is important, it's equally important to communicate the company culture you expect people to embody when they work at your company. Avoid assuming the new people you hire will automatically preserve the already great culture you have at your company. Also, in a smaller business, processes don't matter as much because communication is easy and natural. When your company grows, you have to build planning, communication and accountability into your strategy. Without intentionally doing things to maintain your culture and continue to drive execution, a high growth period can result in a lackluster culture and groups of people that are too chaotic to deliver results.

Here are some key things to do as your company grows to ensure you maintain a great company culture:

1. Scale your processes

2. Don’t assume everyone will know your culture

3. Hold people accountable to company values

4. Have every employee set goals

5. Communicate regularly

6. Celebrate success 

Scale your Processes

When a company is small, process is not required because people naturally find their balance working together and they know what they are accountable for. This is not always true in larger enterprises. Part of what makes a great culture is feeling successful as a company and as a team so ensure you have the right processes to scale your execution for larger groups of people. Agile has numerous ways to do this and the Scaled Agile Framework provides some great practices to help with this. Even smaller companies can benefit from structure around execution and goal setting for employees.  If you don’t have an organized way of goal setting and accountability measures for the company, you have no way of measuring how the additional investments you are making to grow the company are performing. Customize your processes for your company and your current growth stage to get the most benefit. 

Don’t assume everyone will know your Culture and what it means

High growth periods require hiring a lot more employees at your company so it’s imperative that you communicate to everyone you hire what your company culture is and what behavior will and will not be tolerated at your company. The best place to do this is at new hire training when an employee starts so they are informed right away about company values and expectations. In addition to new hire training, talk about culture and what you do as a company to create great culture regularly. Be deliberate about what activities you do to maintain the culture. It's important for employees to know how important culture is to you and that you are doing work to maintain it. The behavior of every single employee creates a culture because people’s view of the company culture is based on their everyday interactions with other employees. Because of that, in order to have a great culture, you have to hold every person at your company accountable to it.

Hold people Accountable to your company values

One of the toughest parts of maintaining great cultures is handling situations where people’s actions are out of alignment with company values. As a company, make sure you train managers on what the culture is and what behavior is expected of their employees. The best way to do this is through manager training of every manager at the company. It should be expected that every manager take the training. In the training, outline how managers model the culture with their own behavior, what leaders should expect from employees and what to do if employees are not embodying the culture. This will not only ensure leaders exemplify the culture, it will empower managers to be purveyors of your culture. If there are people who don’t embody the culture and nothing happens, not only will new employees feel like their actions don't matter, they will realize that it’s not important to personify the culture. Well-trained managers and leaders are key to great organizational cultures. 

Have every Employee set Goals

Part of what makes a great company culture is a successful company. It's hard to hide behind anyone in a small company so people know they have to perform. As a company grows, it’s easier for people to hide performance issues. Everyone you hire at the company was hired to help move the company forward so ensure everyone has clear goals and is accountable to achieve them. Use company-wide goals to help employees and teams set their personal and team goals. In a fast growing company, don’t lose focus on execution and holding employees accountable to meet goals. Everyone wants to be on a winning team and the more your business achieves, the easier it is to celebrate each person’s achievements as part of that success.

Communicate Regularly

There is no such thing as overcommunication. As your company grows, new and old employees alike will be looking to leaders for direction. Use various modes of communication to disseminate information since employees need to hear the same thing several times to really understand and to embody it. Use company meetings, in person offsites, Slack, email and other meetings to interact and to share. Continue to communicate company goals and culture regularly so new employees hear it from all sides all the time. this consistent communication is key during a high growth period.

Celebrate Success

Finally, while high growth periods are filled with opportunities, they can also be exhausting. Don’t forget to take time to celebrate success whenever you can so you can balance the hard work with fun. Take the time to acknowledge and reward teams and employees that went above and beyond in achieving their objectives. Make sure you highlight how achieving these goals is helping take your company to the next level.

While high growth periods are an exciting opportunity for any company, they can also be critical points in your business that can either make or break you. Follow the steps above to ensure that you continue to create a great company culture that can deliver great results and business success for years to come.