How do you maintain the culture of a company as it matures and grows?

In this next installment of Consulting Conversations, Hank Harris shares a few pointers. 

I think the answer to both of those questions is somewhat similar. I think if you step back and think, 'what is a culture?'

A culture is essentially shared behavior in an organization. One of the most important jobs that management has is to decide 'what is the right stuff?' and 'what is the shared behavior that we should all have?' And it's really one of the most important jobs.

So, when you mature, and you grow, there are going to be outside things coming into your company outside, new people, all the things that could, if you weren't deliberate about it, could be dilutive to the culture that you created.

And so, the short answer here is that things that you used to do organically, things that just kind of happened by osmosis, now have to there has to be more structure, more proactive effort, more deliberation put into how that is managed inside the company.

I think it's really the same thing when you have a leadership change at the top. There has to be a decision by whoever the new leadership of the team is whether we're going to take the culture forward or we're not.

And obviously, those are two different roads that a leadership team would go down. But proactive deliberation effort to take that in one direction or the other is what top management got to do.

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