It was during our seventh year in business that I stepped back, took a breath and looked around. Something wasn’t right. Our growth had leveled off. We became average in customer service and product quality. We kept losing talented employees. We even had some customer turnover for the first time in our company’s history.  

The company I had formed no longer represented my ideals. What was the cause? One certainty I did know— the problem and solution rested squarely on my shoulders.

As I researched successful high-growth companies for guidance, the issue became clearer: My message and vision were getting watered down the more we grew. When we were small, everyone learned via “fireside chat.” Now, I was no longer directly involved with the hiring and mentoring of all new employees. Because of this, people were bringing their previous habits and values with them, and they were not always in sync with my vision— our company culture began to change as a result. We began masking issues with rules and guidelines to the point that our “runaway” culture was becoming bureaucratic and stifling. We were creating the very culture that caused me to leave my former employer and start my own company.

Throughout this process, I learned an important paradox: The faster a company grows and the more rapidly things change, the more some things need to remain the same. Let me explain…

Each new employee should bring talent, value and energy to your organization. But they also bring past experiences— some good, some bad. If it is not crystal clear what is expected of them, they will do what made them successful in their past culture. I’ve learned that a company’s core values have to teach employees how to succeed in your culture. How do you know if you have the right core values? Simple. Look around. The people who embody your core values should be the most successful people in your organization. The people who do not embody these values should be on their way out the door.

Our core values and company culture are now designed to find, develop, and most importantly, guide exceptional individuals, which is why we were able to restore my vision for the company. After all, change is inevitable, but values are permanent.

How I fixed my company culture:

establishing core values
I spent seven months with my management team working through our core values, clarifying them, cutting them down to a low number and making them easy to remember. These values had to be versatile enough that they could remain constant in a growing and dynamic company. I then spent months making decisions based on the core values until I verified that the decisions I made using these values were almost always the decisions I would have made. Once I was satisfied, we released them to the company.

integrating core values
The next challenge was to get employees to begin living by our set of core values. To do this, we promoted them in our internal communications, meetings and company social events. Employees received a framed set of our values to hang at their workstations. We printed t-shirts with our values on them. We created “Rock Star Awards,” whereby employees rewarded each other for applying core values in “rock star-worthy” ways. From time-to-time, I would randomly approach employees and ask them to recite the core values. If they could, then they received a US$100 bill on the spot.

embracing core values
Our core values became the guiding force our company was lacking, and they were well received by all employees. Very quickly, our culture became less restrictive, which led to easier and more consistent decision making. Above all, employees were having fun again.

Measuring the value of Core values
Once our core values permeated our company’s culture, our revenue run rate increased 129% in 18 months; employee turnover dropped from about 35% per year to under 10%; and we experienced a 100% client retention rate.