Scaling Your Culture: Maintaining Core Values as an Organisation Grows
How do you keep the connection and principles alive as teams expand? Develop tactics to integrate fundamental principles into expanding frameworks.
Scale your organisational culture effectively. Explore leadership strategies to embed core values and connections as your organisation or team successfully expands.
I remember the exact moment I realised we were losing it.
Our company was just 12 people. We shared a cramped office that always smelled faintly of burnt coffee and ambition. We knew each other’s families. We argued passionately about product features. We celebrated every tiny win like we’d just won the NRL Premiership. Our values were not etched on a surface; they permeated every breath we took.
Then, we got funding. Big funding.
Suddenly, we were hiring. Fast. The team doubled, then tripled. New faces appeared every week. The office got bigger and shinier, but the air felt different. Thinner. The internal jokes began to fade away. I was unaware that decisions were taking place in meetings I had not been invited to.
One afternoon, I saw a new hire sitting alone, looking completely lost. I realised I didn’t even know her name.
That was the moment. The magic, the essence of our creation, was evaporating like sand. We encountered one of the most common organisational growth challenges. Our culture was breaking under the strain of our success.
This article describes how we resolved the issue. It’s a collection of crucial lessons. They are hard-won for any leader watching their team expand and pondering how to keep the original spark.
Key Takeaways
Before we get into the nuts and bolts, here’s the big picture:
Your culture is what people do when no one is looking. Scaling it is an active, not passive, process.
Leadership’s job is to be the chief reminder of “who we are and why we’re here.”
Values on a poster are useless. Values must be verbs—actions you hire, reward, and part ways for.
Rituals and stories are the glue that holds growing teams together across different floors and time zones.
The Tipping Point of Anonymity
The problem with growth isn’t the new people. It’s the anonymity that creeps in.
When you’re small, accountability is natural. You can’t hide. Your actions, good or bad, are visible to everyone. This creates a powerful self-regulating system. But when you grow to 50, or 150, people can become numbers on a spreadsheet. Departments become silos. The “us” feeling shrinks to just the people at your lunch table.
This is the breeding ground for cultural decay. The unwritten rules that once governed behaviour get forgotten because the new majority never learned them in the first place.
I saw it happening at our company. Little things started to change.
People stopped tidying the kitchen.
Emails became more formal and less collaborative.
Our once steadfast assumption of noble intent gave way to a quiet suspicion.
We were succeeding on paper but failing as a community.
Instead of a top-down mandate, the solution began with a thorough introspection.
Making Values Visible and Actionable
Our first step in our culture preservation plan was to rescue our values from a forgotten PowerPoint slide. We had three: Customer Obsession, Default to Transparency, and Own the Outcome.
But as appealing as these phrases were, they remained just that—words on a slide, not actions in our work. They weren’t producing tangible results.
So, we put them to work.
From Vague Principles to Specific Behaviours
Instead of relying on vague principles, we defined specific behaviours that demonstrated their value.
“Customer Obsession” became “Are you listening to customer call recordings? Are you referencing a specific user’s problem when proposing a solution?”
The principle of “Default to Transparency” was rephrased. It stated, “Did you share your progress, including setbacks, in the public project channel? Did you ask questions openly instead of in a private direct message?”
“Own the Outcome” translated to: “When a problem arose, did you focus on the solution or on assigning blame? Did you successfully guide the project to completion, including the final, more detailed tasks?”
We Made Them Part of Our Language
We started using the values as a shorthand in meetings.
“That’s a great idea, but how does it show customer obsession?” or,
“In the spirit of embracing transparency, I must admit that I am behind on my responsibilities in this matter.”
At first, it came across as a trite corporate slogan. This challenge quickly evolved into our guiding principle and a common language for decision-making.
This was a critical element of our expansion planning. By making our principles tangible, we gave every single person, new or old, a clear guide for how to act.
Hiring is Your First Line of Defense
You can’t fix a broken culture with a hiring spree. To keep a strong culture, you can protect it by hiring the right people.
We changed our entire interview process. We still screened for skill, of course. But we added a dedicated “values interview” to our loop. It wasn’t about asking, “Are you a team player?” No one says no to that.
Instead, we asked situational questions that revealed character.
“Tell me about a time you had to deliver bad news to a client. How did you handle it?” (Tests for Transparency and Ownership)
“Describe a project you worked on that you weren’t passionate about. How did you stay motivated?” (Tests for Ownership)
“When was the last time you went out of your way to help a teammate who was struggling?” (Tests for Collaboration, an unwritten value)
This process slowed our hiring. It was frustrating at times. But it was one of the most important leadership strategies for growth we adopted. Every person who walked through the door from that point on was not just skilled. They were a culture add. They were not just a culture fit. They reinforced what we stood for.
You’re thinking this all sounds like a lot of extra work. It is. The cost of a bad hire, particularly one who negatively impacts the culture, is a hundred times greater.
Rituals: The Heartbeat of a Scaling Culture
As you grow, you can’t rely on spontaneous connection. You have to manufacture it. You have to build systems for it. We call these systems rituals.
Rituals are repetitive behaviours that reinforce your identity. They serve as a scaffold that helps maintain values as the organisation grows. We implemented several that made a huge difference.
The Weekly “Wins & Lessons” All-Hands
Every Friday, the entire company got together. Teams shared one thing that went well and one thing they learned from something that didn’t. This event emphasised ritual transparency and celebrated effort, not just perfect results.
The “Random Coffee” Bot
The “Random Coffee” Bot was a straightforward Slack integration. It arranged a weekly 15-minute non-work-related chat. This chat was between two randomly selected employees.
We addressed the issue of anonymity directly.
The conversation led to the formation of many cross-departmental friendships.
It also generated innovative ideas.
The “Value Champion” Award
Anyone could nominate a colleague during our all-hands meeting. The colleague needed to have lived out one of our values in a spectacular way. The winner received a silly trophy and bragging rights. This approach was a simple, powerful way to make heroes out of people who did the right thing.
These rituals weren’t expensive or complicated. But they created predictable moments of connection and reinforcement. These rituals became the core of our organisation, maintaining a steady rhythm even as new members joined the dance.
Wrapping Up
Scaling culture isn’t a mystery. It’s a discipline. When we were small, our culture was a bonfire—warm, bright, and easy for everyone to gather around. As we grew, we couldn’t keep one giant fire going.
Our job as leaders was to give everyone a torch lit by the original flame.
The process required us to be intentional. We had to define our values in clear actions. We used those actions as our guide for hiring. We also built rituals that constantly reminded everyone of who we were.
It was a journey away from accidental closeness to engineered connection. It also preserved the essence of our company.
Growth doesn’t have to mean dilution. With the right systems and a lot of heart, you can get bigger and better at the same time.
🌱 Saving Our Culture: The Growthenticity Connection
The core ideas explored in this article aren’t just isolated concepts; they deeply resonate with the principles of what I call ‘Growthenticity’:
“The continuous, integrated process of becoming more oneself (authentic). We achieve such growth by leading with questions, learning through action, and growing by embracing uncertainty and imperfection. All of this is fueled by curiosity.”
The journey to save our company’s culture was a perfect example of this process. It began by leading with questions—asking why the connection was fading—and embracing the uncertainty of rapid growth. Instead of assuming we had all the answers, we recognised that something was flawed. We realised it was in need of repairs. That vulnerability was the first step towards authentic leadership.
The solutions we found were pure learning through action. Redefining our values, changing our interview process, and creating rituals were all experiments. The “Wins & Lessons” meeting, in particular, became a weekly practice of celebrating growth through imperfection. And the “Random Coffee” bot was specifically designed to fuel the curiosity that keeps an organisation alive and connected. Scaling a culture, it turns out, is an act of growing an authentic identity, not just a headcount.
👉 I encourage you to check out my paid Substack offerings at Lead, Learn, Grow. You can further explore concepts like ‘Growthenticity.’ You will also gain access to practical tools and connect with a supportive community. This community focuses on fostering authentic and impactful growth.
Join us as we unpack these ideas and support each other on our journeys.
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Your Turn
Every leader’s journey with culture is unique. What’s one small ritual that has kept your team connected as it’s grown? Or what’s one challenge you’re facing right now in your expansion planning?
Share your story in the comments below—your experience is the spark someone else needs.
Originally published at https://nomadlearningblog.com on July 11th, 2025
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