How to Maintain Culture as You Scale and Protect What Makes Your Company Great with Gene Hammett

In this episode, I explore how growing companies can effectively maintain their culture as they scale. Drawing insights from my experience with over 800 CEOs from the Inc. 5000, I address the challenges that arise when transitioning from small teams to larger organizations. I argue that attempting to preserve the original culture can be misguided; instead, leaders should focus on adaptability while upholding core values. I emphasize the importance of establishing clear values, aligning new talent with these principles, and viewing hiring as fostering a shared mission. Additionally, I discuss the necessity of evolving cultural values to keep pace with rapid changes in technology and market demands. I invite listeners to connect for resources that can aid in cultivating an environment where growth and culture harmoniously coexist.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:32Speaker 01

  Your culture got you to where you are. If your culture is something you're proud of, then you want to hold on to it. But it's a flawed premise. It's really hard to maintain culture as the company grows. You add people, you add complexity, you add all these things to it. And you want to maintain what you used to have. When you used to be four people, you have a culture that is very different than when you have 10 people. Because you can't all go to lunch together and all sit around one table. Maybe a really big table, but you get my point. And as your company grows to 50 people, it's, it's, there's big shifts. 100 people, 200 people, 500 people. And I see that across my coaching.

• 1:16Speaker 01

  And you're trying to hold on to what you used to have. And it's, it's a failed premise. So what do you need to do instead? Well, it's not about maintaining the culture. It's about being adaptable, but holding true to the core essence of your culture. Welcome to Growth Think Tank. This is the one and only place where you will get insight from the founders and the CEOs of the fastest growing privately held companies. I am the host. My name is Gene Heimert. I help leaders and their teams navigate the defining moments of their growth. Are you ready to grow? Have you ever thought, how do you maintain culture as you scale? Well, it's a common thought with CEOs, especially that come on my podcast.

• 1:57Speaker 01

  We've had probably over 800 CEOs from the Inc 5000 show up to share their insights, share their story. And I'm really proud to be able to look at that and have those moments with those incredible leaders. And the success that they've built in their company. Now, none of them are done leading. They are all kind of still learning and practicing leadership. So don't think that they, you know, put them on a complete pedestal because we, even me, I'm still learning about leadership because it is an ever-evolving and adaptable part of business growth. And that's one thing that makes it a little bit hard because things are changing. And right now, things are changing a lot. AI, the economy is a little bit uncertain, to say the least. So how do you maintain culture as you scale?

• 2:42Speaker 01

  Now, if you've ever thought about that question, you are not alone. I ask a lot of the guests that have come on the show before their biggest leadership challenge because I want to create content that resonates with this. And I don't think I've done anything around this, but let's just go ahead and unpack this. Before we get started, my name is Gene Hammett. I'm a CEO coach. I do executive coaching and we have leadership development where we're coaching managers to be leaders. And one way that you can frame that is we help companies that have MVPs become the kind of leader that creates more MVPs. That could be the CEO, that could be the, an executive. It could be someone that is rising the ranks from manager up.

• 3:25Speaker 01

  And if you can get them to let go of being the MVP, they can create more MVPs. If you're curious about the trainings that we have and you want to, you know, just kind of go a little bit deeper with us, you can go to this URL. It is training.corelevations.com and it will help you become a better leader. It will help you identify what's holding you back and give you a playbook, if you will, with five things that you want to be able to do and change in order for your company to scale beyond five million. So just go to training.corelevations.com. Now, let's dive into this, maintaining your culture. First of all, I get the premise of this because your culture got you to where you are.

• 4:08Speaker 01

  And if your culture is something you're proud of, then you want to hold on to it. But it's a flawed premise. It's really hard to maintain culture as the company grows.

• 4:20Speaker 01

  You add people, you add complexity, you add all these things to it and you want to maintain what you used to have. When you used to be four people, you have a culture that's very different than when you have 10 people. Because you can't all go to lunch together and all sit around one table, um, maybe a really big table, but you get my point. And as your company grows to 50 people, it's, it's, there's big shifts, 100 people, 200 people, 500 people. And I see that across my coaching and you're trying to hold on to what you used to have. And it's, it's a failed premise. So what do you need to do instead? Well, it's not about maintaining the culture, but it's about being adaptable, but holding true to the core essence of your culture.

• 5:05Speaker 01

  What that really means is you've got to define what makes you you as a company. Typically, one of the first places you want to look is your company core values. You want to make sure those values are clearly defined and that we are living them every step inside the business. Now I've got some free tools. If you want this, I'll give them to you. All you have to do is send me an email, [email protected] and ask for my core values to help you create them. And actually how to use them and live them and operationalize your values. When you do that, you have a much better chance to actually do that. And it's completely free. I'll just give it to you. Just send me an email, [email protected]. But maintaining culture is not possible.

• 5:47Speaker 01

  Let's, let's play a scenario. You're going to add five more people. Those five people have different personalities. Those, those five people have different skills. They are different experience levels, ages, whatever. It changes the culture. If you start adding a bunch of young people, things are going to change. If you added someone that's much more experienced, gray hair like me, uh, it's going to change things. And those are part of the journey of an entrepreneur. I'm not saying it's easy, but it's not about holding on to the culture that you used to have. But it's, it's understanding the core essence and then being adaptable as you bring other people into it. One of my favorite guests have been on the show is Horst Schulze. He's a co-founder of Ritz Carlton and.

• 6:30Speaker 01

  One of the things he has shared with us, I'm not even sure it's through the podcast or it's just in our private conversations, because we've talked over the years, have lunch together and whatnot. And he's like, you're not hiring a person for a job. That's the wrong way to look at it. You're inviting them on the mission with you. And so when you have a mission that is really dialed into that, you have a different kind of experience. So when you think about what's going to happen next in your business, you can't just maintain the culture. You've got to understand the core essence of that. So one of them is the values and those values are clearly defined and they are powerful. They're compelling. They really represent who you are and you're inviting people in this mission with you, like I said,

• 7:14Speaker 01

  but you are really responsible for hiring people that align with those values. Because if they don't, for example, if you have a very proactive culture and you bring in someone who is reactive, this is not something that's really taught. Can people change? Yes, but is it difficult? Yes, very much so. But reactiveness is a way of being. And if that's what's comfortable to them and that's their default, then you will be frustrated with that person at every turn. That's just one example and we can get even more granular with that. I don't want to go too much into the negative side of this. I want to help you move forward with it. So how do you maintain that culture as your company scales? Well, it's not about maintaining.

• 7:59Speaker 01

  It's about understanding the core essence and really bringing the most out of that. So once you have the values, you want to make sure you're living them. Those touchpoints that we talked about earlier, again, I'll give them to you, [email protected]. Then you've got to lead by example. You've got to take those values and really be the kind of leader that embodies those values, reinforces those values, holds people accountable to those values and all of the things in between. Your job is to make sure that your company stays clear to that. Now, sometimes those values change over time. You may move into a stage where we need to be more innovative, right? AI is moving fast, really fast. And so you may think, How do we move that? How do we change that?

• 8:42Speaker 01

  And I've recently added a value to my company that I've shared with my team and we're reinforcing that. And so we've added speed matters to our other five, four values. So now we have five. Speed matters because we want to leverage AI where we can in certain ways to leverage speed. And I'm not replacing any employees. I'm just producing more. I'm creating better content because of AI. And so innovation is a shift that the company's making. So that's just within my company. I don't know what your shift is, but things do change. And I want to wrap this up today with just putting the, the explanation part on this. It's not about maintaining your company as you scale or not maintaining your culture. Sorry, as you scale.

• 9:27Speaker 01

  It's about understanding the core essence, being able to be adaptable as you add people and as your company evolves and as you as a leader evolve. And that is how you lead through a culture shift. So that being said, I love the work we're doing. If you want to go deeper with this, if you want to figure out and join us for our next training on how do you get out of being the bottleneck for your business? Go to training.corelevations.com. Absolutely free. It will help you. If you want to jump straight to the, the top of the line, send me an email, [email protected] and I will get you plugged in to the right place. We have a quick call and decide what's next for you. Absolutely free.

• 10:08Speaker 01

  And when you think of leadership and you think of growth, think of growth thinking, as always, the courage is in the heart.

• 10:21Speaker 02

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