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In the beginning, it was just us: Two law school graduates turned serial entrepreneurs, a husband-and-wife team working on our second big venture. Our vision, to create a business entity formation and maintenance company built on a culture of accountability and integrity without compromise. In addition, we wanted our company to be fun to work for, where staff members were celebrated, their ideas and creativity encouraged, the kind of company that parents would want their kids to work for. The culture would be unique, bold, unafraid of judgment, where occasional bouts of “weirdness” and nonconformity weren’t eschewed but embraced.
Such a specific culture was easy to maintain when it was just my husband, myself and our first round of new associates. As a fifteen-person team, our culture functioned as intended. Work was fun. Our culture also made us stand out in the marketplace and drove client loyalty.
Then, growth happened. In a period of a few short years, we went from a literal “mom and pop” operation to 100+ employees. With scaling comes new ideas and new opportunities. Teamwork is powerful, greater than the sum of its parts. It was an exciting time. Such dynamic growth, however, invites cultural risk. We soon learned that, when left unchecked, cultural risk becomes cultural harm: i.e. the proliferation of attitudes, norms and business practices that run counter to those on which the company was founded. Not wanting to lose or compromise the vision we had for our business, Phil and I vowed to never let up on our promotion of our original culture and core values.
Related: Most Entrepreneurs Approach Culture the Wrong Way. Here’s What They’re Missing.
How to think about your business’s culture: A simple rule
Today, I use a simple rule of thumb that helps in the cultural governance of our growth. I call this the One-to-One rule, as it’s evocative of the one-on-one dynamic my husband and I shared in the early days of this business venture. The One-to-One rule is about a balance of “breadth” and “depth.” It’s simple to understand. Whenever your business broadens, to include more personnel, more service offerings, more locations, new verticals and so forth, it must also deepen, entailing, first and foremost, a deepening of culture, to include both workplace culture and customer-facing brand identity.
In the wake of dynamic growth, all old trainings must be rethought and updated. Brand new trainings must come online that emphasize the most up-to-date rendition of the firm’s cultural identity. Did your firm just make a dozen new hires? Great. Congratulations. It’s time to put some new team-building events on the calendar, events and workshops that will enhance the cultural IQ of new and veteran employees alike.
And please, don’t hold back on the pomp and circumstance when welcoming your new additions. Parties and other ice-breaking events are must-haves. Try weird things. Seriously. Even if they don’t go as planned (and they may go poorly). Lesson learned, move on. Try something else. Never lose your will to be weird and never lose sight of the One-to-One principle, ensuring that the depth of your business scales in synch with its breadth. This is the recipe for great culture and sustainable growth.
What not to do
You may feel that your business’s cultural identity couldn’t be stronger. It’s so dialed-in, so attractive, so intuitive that it’s bound to organically propagate itself across layers and layers of expansion. If you think your business’s culture and values are indestructible, I’d recommend you consider carefully the case of Starbucks. That’s right, the Siren-singing coffee chain once struggled to present a unified brand identity. As CEO Howard Schulz describes in his book Onward: How Starbucks Fought for Its Life without Losing Its Soul, there was a time when the proliferation of Starbucks retail stores was so intense that it compromised their ability to provide a uniform customer experience.
As a result, the brand’s reputation became diluted, and the coffee giant’s bottom line was negatively affected. Schultz prides himself on the dramatic actions he took to restore the business’s cultural and brand identity, including the temporary closure in 2008 of over 7,000 stores for a few hours so baristas could be retrained on how to pull the perfect espresso shot.
Don’t make the mistake of thinking that only enterprise-class businesses, like Starbucks, are subject to cultural risk. Without vigilance, smaller businesses too might lose track of their culture and core values, even in times of slower or no growth. This is why it’s important to expand, celebrate and amplify your culture on a continuous basis, with extra gusto during phases of dynamic expansion.
Related: 5 Ways CEOs Can Assess and Reset Their Company Culture
What to do
Your first order of business, if you haven’t done so already, is to determine precisely what you want in your business’s culture. For example, in our firm, my husband and I knew from the very beginning that we wanted to build and preserve a family-centric feel in our business, one where our team members would be granted flexibility and understanding when it came to kids’ activities and other family obligations. We also wanted a culture that veered away from hierarchies, preferring instead a radical “open door” approach that encouraged direct and safe communications with and between all levels of management.
Once you’ve defined the core cultural tenets for your firm, it’s time to rigorously pursue buy-in from your staff. They need to be educated on the what, why, and how of your cultural practices. Workshops, forums and trainings should allow your employees to “give back,” contributing their own thoughts and ideas on how the business’s cultural identity can best be defined, refined and lived up to. A staff member, for example, could inquire about how our business’s family-centric character may lead to staff members without family members feeling as if they’re afforded less flexibility than their coworkers. They may even suggest means by which such discrepancies could be remedied.
My final piece of advice is three-fold: celebrate, celebrate, celebrate. If you’ve done your work properly, then you will have produced an environment your employees want to inhabit, one they will help develop and protect, in which they will feel safe, seen and valued. This is a cause worth celebrating, and all you need to do is find an excuse to do just that. Celebrations can come in many forms. At our shop, we’re big on birthdays, work anniversaries and other milestones, whatever we can do to bring everyone together and bask in the warmth and camaraderie we’ve all helped to create.
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Nellie Akalp