You've probably heard that popular piece of conventional wisdom that says human beings don’t change. I don’t know if this is actually true in practice, but it makes me wonder: if people don’t change, and businesses are made of people, why does it seem like so many companies lose their way?
The answer lies somewhere in the murky waters of what we call company culture—a thing that for some businesses functions as an inflexible rule book but for others provides a bit more flexibility.
The truth is this: as companies become larger and are forced to adapt to their continuing success, culture is a thing that’s all too easy to lose sight of. If you don’t want to call it culture, you can refer to it by any of its other names, such as vision or mandate. They all refer to the same thing: the collection of values upon which your company was built in the first place.
Mind Your Dimensions
Most companies grow in two dimensions at once: horizontally and vertically. If you've got a halfway decent business model, the horizontal growth takes care of itself: you’ll find yourself taking on new clients and customers, and you’ll inevitably extend your reach to new markets as you seize new opportunities.
Vertical growth is a little more difficult to maintain gracefully. The most traditional companies rely a bit too slavishly, I’d say, on hierarchy and lose sight of the value of true collaboration.
A lot of the companies you read about that got their start in someone’s basement or garage sprang into being because a small handful of people came together with a common purpose. The business may later have been incorporated under just one or two of their names, but the culture—the company’s landscape, if you will—remained a flat one: decisions were still made as a group, rather than by one domineering personality.
To some degree this is an unscalable ideal; trying to grow a business while retaining that roundtable-style decision making process might be a balancing act too difficult to maintain.
I like to think we’ve struck a positive balance as we’ve grown our own company. We’ve been growing each of our teams consistently over the last few years, with our numbers now approaching 70 employees strong. And I believe we've done a pretty good job of making sure our managers are approachable and accessible—they feel like a part of the team they oversee, rather than a separate office far removed from the politics of day-to-day office life.
The bottom line here is that minding your dimensions is about maintaining mobility; anyone in the company is free to float their ideas (as well as their grievances) all the way to the top—or to any other rung of the ladder, for that matter.
Don’t Bite Off More Than You Can Chew
While company culture and organization is something you have a fair amount of control over, company growth is sometimes out of your hands. Maybe you’ve hit upon a stellar idea, or the planets align just so. Whatever the reason, the quickly-growing business can often make the mistake of biting off more than they can chew, which can sometimes lead to a full-blown identity crisis along the way.
I’m proud to work with a York-based company that seems to have made an art of this kind of balancing act. You can read all about Shipley Energy and their history here, but here’s the gist of it: Shipley Energy have capitalized on their success by acquiring a wide range of new companies: restaurants, a solar-powered security system, and a handful of other energy companies.
Even more remarkable is that Shipley Energy is a fourth-generation family-owned company, with a strong heritage of local service. Making an entrance into new markets could have spelled trouble for a company with less confidence and stability, but Shipley Energy make it work.
Elsewhere, ambition can have a heavy price tag. Since 2012 we've been hearing all about Groupon and their assorted troubles. The accepted explanation seems to be that
I hate to invoke the image of the tortoise and the hare, but maintaining a responsible rate of growth often comes down to the “slow and steady” approach. Granted, plenty of folks will tell you that biting off more than you can chew is actually a great idea if you can do it “without going crazy.” I don’t know what your threshold for crazy is, but I still suggest a measured approach: one that lets you focus not solely on the fable of the meteoric rise, but instead on staying connected to the things that made your company great in the first place.
Remember What You Value
I mentioned company values in passing above, and I’d like it to be the final element we discuss here. When you ask a person what it is they believe in, you usually hope they have a better answer than “myself” or “money.” I want the same to be true of my business, and I imagine you want the same for yours.
A business needs values to survive. You need to know, for example, to what degree you value your employees and their time, and how you’re going to prove it to them. You need to know what you value aside from profit, and what price you’re willing to pay for success. And perhaps most importantly, you need to remember why you built your business in the first place. This is the kind of calculus that every business needs to master; a company without values and vision is a company without a rudder.
