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How to scale your culture as your company grows

How to scale your culture as your company grows

10 June 2020

“A strong culture increases net income 765 percent over 10 years”, according to a Harvard study. But as the company grows, a positive culture that was created spontaneously may disappear as the company incorporates more people.

Can you scale **both a business and a culture?**

Or must you accept that what was once “natural” must evolve, and be formalised?

You don’t have to be a magician to scale your culture, just take a more thoughtful approach to the processes, the communication and the relationships that are created along the way.

In this eBook, you’ll find some theory to understand what culture actually is, the insights from some best-selling authors who’ve given the subject a lot of thought, concrete advice to scale your culture as your company grows, as well as models to follow with the example of Lyft, and not to follow, with the cases of companies whose cultures turned out to be damagingly toxic: Uber and WeWork.

In this e-book

Beyond the Dunbar’s number (150 collaborators), maintaining a cohesive group takes more restrictive rules and enforced norms. In other words, beyond that number, what was once “natural” must be formalised in rules, processes and systems.

Rather than break a culture, growth can some times reveal a culture to the world.

With millions (or more) users and thousands of employees, there’s no hiding it anymore. That’s what’s happened to these two companies that grew very fast: Uber and WeWork.

Scaling means you have to expand way beyond your original niche, early adopters and first business model. If you have to embrace new business models, as many companies do when they grow, you need a new culture to support them.

There is no such thing as cultural purity for a growing company.