How Can You Scale Organization While Maintaining Core Values?
Scaling an organization is a delicate balance of growth and value preservation, a challenge that five executive leaders, including CEOs and a VP of Market Operations, have tackled head-on. From making core values your growth guide to demonstrating those values through leadership actions, these executives share their strategies for maintaining a company's essence amidst expansion.
- Make Core Values Your Growth Guide
- Hire for Shared Vision and Passion
- Prioritize Quality and Care in Expansion
- Promote from Within to Preserve Culture
- Demonstrate Values Through Leadership Actions
Make Core Values Your Growth Guide
Scaling an organization while preserving its core values is a bit like juggling chainsaws—exciting and potentially disastrous if you drop the ball! At GNC, we tackled this challenge by making core values the North Star of every growth decision, ensuring they weren't just words on a plaque but the heartbeat of our strategy. One strategy that worked wonders was empowering frontline teams to embody these values as if they were undercover superheroes—capable of saving the day while staying true to our mission. By embedding values into everything from hiring practices to performance reviews, we cultivated a culture where scaling felt less like adding layers and more like expanding our family. After all, maintaining core values isn't just about scaling up; it's about growing stronger together.
Hire for Shared Vision and Passion
By putting extra emphasis on the hiring process to get the right people, some dilution of the initial purpose is unavoidable when your company grows. This is something I've experienced firsthand due to the massive surge in popularity for hybrid workforce management solutions in recent years. That said, what works best for me to mitigate this is to simply hire the right people who share the core vision and passion for hybrid work that the starting cohort and I feel. Sure, this means that recruitment can take longer than we'd prefer, but at the same time, it means a relatively low attrition rate because our values and the values of the new hires are in alignment from the word go.
Prioritize Quality and Care in Expansion
Scaling an organization while staying true to its core values is like walking a tightrope, but it's absolutely doable with the right focus. At PRESS Modern Massage, we faced this challenge head-on by prioritizing our commitment to quality and care in every expansion decision. I remember when we opened our second location, we brought in seasoned therapists who embodied our values and invested in thorough training to ensure they delivered the same exceptional experience our clients expected. One specific example was our 'client-first' policy—no matter how busy we got, we always made sure each client felt valued and heard, just like when we were a single studio. And, a little secret: keeping a bit of humor in our daily operations helped too; it reminded us to stay grounded and connected. This approach not only helped us grow without losing our essence but also reinforced the trust and loyalty of our clients, proving that you can scale and stay true to your roots simultaneously.
Promote from Within to Preserve Culture
We work to preserve our company culture primarily by promoting from within. We focus on hiring and developing talent, then giving them more responsibility after they've been with us for at least a year or two. In that time, they'll learn not just the technical aspects of their role and how to relate to key stakeholders, but also our culture and values. This way, when we move them into leadership positions, they're able to inculcate those same values in their staff.
Thank you for the chance to contribute to this piece! If you do choose to quote me, please refer to me as Nick Valentino, VP of Market Operations at Bellhop.
Demonstrate Values Through Leadership Actions
Scaling while staying true to our core values means visibly embodying them every day. At Lido.app, I make it a point to demonstrate the importance of innovation and user-centric design through my actions. For instance, I often sit in on user feedback sessions to personally understand pain points and brainstorm solutions with the team. This hands-on approach shows everyone that we are committed to continuous improvement.
Such behaviors foster a culture of accountability and inspire others to align their work with our values. When employees see leadership actively engaged and living these principles, it reinforces the expectations and motivates them to follow suit. It ensures that even as we grow, the essence of what makes us unique remains intact. This alignment between actions and values is crucial for sustainable and harmonious scaling.
