In the day-to-day of business, owners and leaders spend time putting out fires, managing operations and trying to keep up, which all makes it easy to lose sight of something that doesn’t always feel urgent: company culture.
Whether it’s an expansion, brand campaign or a new product rollout, you wouldn’t move forward without a clear plan. The same should be true for your company culture. Before change happens you need a strategy, one that addresses infrastructure and personnel decisions, so that you don’t lose the very people or principles that make your business what it is.
When you plan for culture with the same intention as other areas of the business, you’re not just preserving what works today, you’re creating a legacy. The decisions you make about how people are hired, supported and led will shape how your company feels years from now. Culture isn’t just what happens now; it’s what lasts.
Warning: Culture at risk without a plan
Business leaders often mistake superficial things for culture: The foosball table in the break room or the meeting rooms named after comic book characters. But really, company culture is shaped by a host of organizational decisions, many of which are tied to infrastructure and people strategy.
When that infrastructure starts to collapse under the new volumes generated by growth or operational shifts, the culture starts to change.
How operational gaps can erode culture over time
Consider these common situations where absence of a clear people strategy and scalable infrastructure puts cultural continuity at risk:
- Hiring woes: Once key managers are no longer interviewing all the candidates themselves, companies may veer off course. Managers begin hiring to fill chairs, not for organizational fit.
- Infrastructure fails: Ad hoc processes and procedures or existing software often fails to support larger volumes or additional complexity.
- Increased turnover: Valued employees jump ship because they feel isolated or demoralized by changes and aren’t sure they have a place in the new organization.
- Resistance to change: Employees resist necessary changes as the organization grows and matures.
- Productivity drop: Inadequate onboarding leads to less productivity as old employees scramble to train their new coworkers.
- Talent gaps: One level of experience may have been appropriate previously but hampers operations in the new, larger organization.
- Land grabs or paralysis: Lines of responsibility get muddy, leaving some managers unclear whether they have the authority to make key decisions, while others take on too much.
While these challenges may seem operational, all directly impact the future culture of your organization because culture is the byproduct of organizational decisions.
How people strategy helps define your cultural legacy
For example, if you form small employee committees to help you navigate the growth and any associated changes, your organization may be seen as a collaborative culture that values employee opinions and empowers people to actively manage the organization.
If you or the executive team choose to make all the decisions and dictate those changes down to the rank and file, your company will likely be viewed as a traditional, hierarchical organization with defined communication channels.
Neither of these situations is better than the other. Whether one approach works best for your company depends on its leadership and its industry. Power plant workers may expect a traditional, hierarchical workplace, while employees at an IT startup with a highly collaborative environment may require a different method.
The key is being intentional about how your people strategy supports and sustains your cultural legacy over time.
Plan the growth, then work the plan
Much like you would plan a new product, your growing or evolving business requires an intentional plan for the future.. After all, a company’s culture is as individual as the business itself, and it doesn’t stay static.
A solid plan should help you combat the common issues of rapid growth mentioned above:
- Hiring woes: If key managers need to delegate some or most of the hiring, new hiring managers need to be trained on interviewing techniques. This requires your company to first identify what’s important about its culture, whether that’s innovation or a customer service mindset, and then creating an interview process that supports finding the right people for the roles.
- Infrastructure fails: Analyze existing project management structure, software systems, information flow, decision-making processes and staffing needs. You’ll also need to assess whether some parts of the operation should be outsourced or grown in-house. Planning to outsource, for instance, can lessen resistance to that change when it becomes necessary.
- Increased turnover: Engage employees early and often about why changes are occurring as a critical strategy to reduce turnover. If growth means that some positions will be eliminated, communicate that as soon as possible, preferably with the stipulation that all employees in good standing will be offered another role, if possible. If turnover starts creeping up among key performers, dig into why this is happening by performing exit interviews and addressing pain points as quickly and thoroughly as possible.
- Resistance to change: Longer-term employees may fight necessary changes for growth if they don’t understand the need for change. For instance, without adequate communication, new requirements for additional documentation for expenses may be perceived as an “added level of bureaucracy” rather than adoption of generally accepted accounting practices. Most people understand that change is inevitable for a business to thrive. They’ll be more likely to support that change if they feel like their leaders know where the company is going and why.
- Productivity drop: First, plan for and acknowledge that new employees need time to acclimate and learn their jobs. Develop a robust onboarding process so new employees can be as productive as possible, as quickly as possible.
- Talent gaps: Take an honest look at your current leadership and whether they have the leadership skills and technical knowledge to manage a larger scale business. If the company turns to outsourcing to fill gaps in leadership or frontline workers, cultural fit is just as important as in a permanent hire.
- Land grabs or paralysis: Fully think through organizational charts and processes before and during times of rapid growth. Clear lines of responsibility keep customer needs from falling through the cracks and prevent overly ambitious managers from steamrolling over others.
Build a culture that can withstand time
By being deliberate in your growth and decision-making, you can build the type of culture that fits your brand, not just a default culture that forms by accident.
A strong people strategy helps align infrastructure, talent and leadership decisions with your long-term culture visions, protecting what makes your company unique as it evolves.
Key takeaways
- Culture is built over time through intentional decisions, not surface-level perks
- Without a clear people strategy, growth and change can quietly erode culture
- Proactive planning can help you navigate organizational changes without losing your company’s unique identity
- Protecting culture isn’t about avoiding change, it’s about guiding it in alignment with your values
Learn more about building or evolving your company culture with a people-first approach: The Insperity guide to designing a people-first culture.