Don’t Let Culture Drift as You Scale
Tactics for keeping your company culture grounded as your team grows from 20 to 50 and beyond.
DEAR STAGE 2: We’re growing fast, and I can see the culture changing day to day. Any best practices we should be following to make sure we’re being intentional about how our culture evolves as we grow from 20 to 50 employees over the next few quarters? ~CULTURE CONSCIOUS
DEAR CULTURE CONSCIOUS: This week, I had the chance to sit down with Cody Kroll, Stage 2 LP and Director of International Sales at TEKsystems. Cody’s no stranger to scale. As the Country Manager in Japan, he grew his org from 0 to 60+ team members and worked closely with the sales org to exceed quota 20 straight quarters. Through it all, he's had a front-row seat to how culture shifts at every inflection point and, more importantly, what it takes to steer it with intention.
As your team expands from a few people to five, then to 20, you'll inevitably notice the cultural shifts that come with growth. Some of those may feel like growing pains, but they are also opportunities to recenter your team around your cultural aspirations and identity. Here are a few key pieces of advice to help you navigate this next stage of growth:
1. Build Your Cultural Foundation Before You Need It
In the early days, culture is often shaped passively and mostly through proximity. Founders lead by example, and early hires observe and mimic those behaviors. Unfortunately, that doesn’t scale. With each hire, that proximity starts to fade, and the culture can drift. Founders can’t spend hours each day or week with each employee and have to rely on early hires to act as culture carriers.
Cody’s advice? Don’t wait to define your culture. If you wait until the culture feels off, you’ve waited too long. Your early team sets the tone for the next group that follows. They should be aware and intentional of what “great” looks like.
Start simple. At TEKsystems, Cody drew inspiration from Pete Caroll’s famous “3 rules” for the Seattle Seahawks:
Always Protect the Team
No Whining, No Complaining, No Excuses
Be Early
And… adapted them for their org:
Act like an owner
Care for each other
Be disciplined
It doesn’t have to be a long list. But it does need to be specific enough to anchor behavior, broad enough to scale with the team, and clear/concise enough that people can remember them and put them into action.
2. Model the Behavior (and Celebrate It Early and Often)
Defining values is step one. But Cody emphasized the importance of turning those values into visible behaviors: “More than just defining it, you need to model this behavior and celebrate when you see others embodying the values.”
That means:
Baking it into onboarding: Don’t wait for people to figure it out. Be explicit about how your team operates and how those values and behaviors should show up.
Making those values visible – Celebrate when someone lives the culture. Whether it’s a public shoutout or a quiet thank-you, recognition turns values into behaviors that stick.
Peer-to-peer acknowledgement and accountability is crucial: This isn’t just top-down, culture sticks when teammates hold each other to the same standard. In fact, this peer-to-peer recognition and accountability is arguably more important as you scale!
As Ben Horowitz says, “There’s a saying in the military that if you do something below standard and do nothing, you set a new standard.” It’s important to address any cultural slips quickly, because silence rewrites the culture.
3. Treat Culture Like a Product
Even with a strong foundation, your culture will (and should!) evolve, especially if you’re growing fast. Cody noticed cultural drift about every 6 months. His recommendation?
Plan for regular cultural resets.
Use team offsites or all-hands to reflect on what’s working (and what isn’t).
Reconnect with your leadership team on what values look like in practice. Are you still aligned?
Make space for honest conversations when you notice cracks. Don’t just course-correct privately. Instead, bring the team into the process where it makes sense.
And finally, don’t overlook the relationships among your leaders. If your department heads and frontline managers aren’t in sync, the cultural disconnect will trickle down fast. Ensuring your leaders have strong bonds and mutual understanding, even if they manage different functions, is critical to building a strong and lasting culture.
Culture doesn’t scale on autopilot, but if you define the behaviors you want to see, model them consistently, and reflect often, you can grow your team without losing your identity.
Thanks again to Cody for sharing his experience with us.
Until next week!