A long long time ago, when I was a management consultant, I did a strategy project for a large European IT company. At the same time this company was going through a “Culture Change” project with the idea of transforming itself into a fast and nimble “US like” culture, instead of its existing plodding and slow ways.

The “Culture Change” project was huge and cost a small fortune. It involved a great many retreats, offsite meetings, team activities, slogans, and so on. It went on for well over one year. In the end, did the culture of the company change? Not one bit. The critical missing ingredient: there was very little change in senior leadership. Other than the new CEO (who kicked off the project), all of the key positions were either unchanged or filled internally. The existing culture of the company was deeply embedded in the personalities of this group and company culture seems to flow from the top.

What does this have to do with startups? It turns out that in high growth startups the leadership team can change fairly rapidly, and that brings with it both the potential and danger of culture change. A common scenario here is one in which a founder brings in a new executive (e.g., a President or COO), who is then in charge of hiring other senior people. This can be a very good thing if the culture change represents a maturing of the company while retaining the essence of the startup. But there is also the risk of going all too quickly from an entrepreneurial culture to a managerial one.

So if you are a startup that’s growing rapidly, make culture an explicit goal lest it change on you in unexpected ways.

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