What happens to the culture of a startup or small company that goes through a major growth phase? Can it preserve its culture—often the main reason people joined in the first place?

Growing the culture without losing it should be of significant concern, since that culture is a major factor in the creativity, productivity, and retention of the people who produced the growth in the first place. This is a valid cause for concern.

Companies are usually started by a core group who have similar MAP and share a vision. How does a CEO protect the culture the company has without retarding growth? The careful hiring that is the solution often falls by the wayside during fast growth periods involving robust staffing.

If the wrong people are hired it can badly damage or totally change a company’s culture. Remember that a person with terrific skills and experience and lots of charm can still be “wrong” if their personal mindset, attitude, and philosophy aren’t, at the least, synergistic with the company culture.

Here are three things you can do to help avoid “bad” hires:

• Define and publicize your culture and its infrastructure (infrastructure refers to specific intangibles, such as attitudes, as well as processes and policies that support your culture and make it work). Remember, the object is not to etch the culture in granite, since it needs to be flexible in order to grow with the company.
• Include the intangibles (culture, manager’s style, MAP desired) when writing the job description.
• Everybody who interviews should describe the culture, including talking about the infrastructure that supports it, and stress the CEOs commitment to it. This alerts candidates to the environment you have now and that you plan to keep it. This is especially critical when hiring your senior staff or other managers who will, in turn, be hiring, since managers tend to hire in their own image. Be prepared for the possibility of prime candidates withdrawing, or your having to pass on them, because of a bad cultural fit.

Of course there will be changes in the culture as the company matures, but they should be evolutionary rather than revolutionary, well thought out and planned and publicized—which will make them much more acceptable to your people.

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This entry was posted on Friday, April 28th, 2006 at 9:07 pm and is filed under Business info, Communication, Culture, Hiring, Retention. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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