How to scale culture

When companies are small, setting and guiding culture is easy. There are only a few staff members and people watch and do what others do. Keeping culture in check is easy and when things fall out of line it is easy to check and correct, and people see that correction and understand more the culture.

But as a company grows, you can’t rely on people learning from others as you are rapidly bringing new people in and if they do not match your culture they will start to affect others with the culture they bring with them.

How to fix this

1. Leadership

People look to the leaders for examples of how to act. If your culture is one of putting people first, make sure the leaders put people first. It does not matter what it says on your poster on the wall, people act as leaders act.

2. Check-in

Explaining the culture when new people join is one thing, but old habits die hard. In the 1-1 structure of a business, ask staff members simple questions designed to work out if they understand and convey the culture. They cannot fail this, as their answers simple determine how well the culture is being propagated at scale. Questions such as “if you have these two competing priorities how would you handle it” or “you have an angry customer on the phone how would you handle it” will tell you their modus operandi. If it matches the culture great! If not more communication is needed.

3. Communication

When rapidly bringing in new team members they will bring with them all their old cultures too, good and bad. I remember once when a team member was hired and they came from an organisation with a terrible culture (hence why they left). The problem was they would enter meetings and bring a real low energy demeanour - and you could visibly see how it was affecting those around them. It is a leaders job to spot this and ask them to forget the negative cultures of the past and embrace the more positive ones you aspire to.

People will always default to their old behaviours, so it is your job to repeat, at every opportunity, the culture. Only when you are sick of saying the same thing over and over again, have you almost communicated the culture. People are wired for stories, so giving real world examples will last much longer than a list of behaviours.