Episode 79: How to Preserve Your Culture While You Scale
Strategies for Maintaining Company Culture in a Growing Business
In the world of business, culture is key. It shapes the personality and attitude of your team, and ultimately drives the results of your company. But as your business grows, how do you preserve your culture? This is a common challenge faced by service-based small business owners, especially those with remote teams and different age ranges. In this episode of Collab with Kiva, Miriam Meima, a coach and facilitator with over 20 years of experience working with executives and leaders at all levels, shares her insights on how to preserve your culture while scaling.
Defining Culture
According to Miriam, culture is the aggregate personality of your team. It includes your attitude, how you deal with conflict, and how you relate to each other. Your company culture inevitably drives your results, so it's important to look at it as a whole and make sure it aligns with your desired image in the marketplace.
Common Pitfalls Related to Culture
Ignoring culture is the biggest pitfall, says Miriam. Every company has a culture, whether it's consciously designed or not. One common blind spot is ignoring the impact of outsized personalities on the team, which can shape the culture positively or negatively. Another common pitfall is being dishonest with ourselves about our culture. It's important to have an honest conversation about how we operate and what our culture truly is.
Strategies for Preserving Culture While Scaling
Miriam recommends articulating what you want your culture to be, whether it's through values or personality traits. Then, reinforce it at every step of the game, from onboarding to meeting culture to policies and procedures. For new employees, provide frequent feedback on how they're matching the culture, and share the why behind it if they're missing the mark.
Podcast Transcript:
Kiva Slade 0:01
Welcome to Collab with Kiva, where we let our inner nerd geek out on all the non sexy parts of your business. I'm talking data and operations. Neither as flashy or glamorous, but both are foundational to your business growth. I'm your host, Kiva Slade, your strategy and analytics guide here to break down what feels complicated, so it is understandable and executional. Let's dive in. Hello, and welcome to another episode of Collab with Kiva. today. I'm excited to have Miriam Meima with me. Miriam has been a coach and facilitator for over 20 years dedicating her life to studying the overlap between business and psychology. Miriam has coached founders, executives at hundreds of company, including a dozen valued at over a billion dollars yes, a billion as in B. She often partners with companies from Series B all the way through going public. She also though works one on one with senior leaders, facilitates team off sites and develops customized leadership development journeys. For leaders at all levels. Her specialty is in helping people unlock the next level of performance while maximizing authenticity. And I think we could all use a bit more of that. So Miriam's additional credentials include a master's in organizational and management development at BA in business and psychology. She is a master certified coach. For those that don't know, that's like the top you need a gazillion hours of coaching in order to have that from the international coaching Federation. She's a fellow at Harvard's Institute of coaching, and a member of Forbes coaches Council. Mariam Welcome to the show.
Mariam Meima 1:54
Thank you so much for having me. I'm happy to be here.
Kiva Slade 1:58
Yes. I'm excited to hear and I'm excited about this conversation. Today, we are going to dive in how to preserve your culture while you scale. And this is a good one because, one, it's one thing when it's you and like one or two other people, it's a totally different thing when it's you and 10 other people, and you start to feel angst. Why is things not the same as they used to be? What about this? And then you have new people coming in? How do they feel even when they come in? So I'm excited to dive into this topic? I have a few clients whose teams are growing. And it's like, how do we preserve that culture, and especially for those who have remote teams, like one of my clients, nine employees, and like some of them get to meet for client engagements and they you know, travel and meet, but for the most part, some of the young in a whole other issue is can we talk about like Gen X on your team and millennials as well as Gen Y, Z and all the other things? Yes. Like? There's a lot going on nowadays. And it's like some of the younger team members are saying, can we have co working sessions? Can we have this because they want more bonding, where some of the other team members are like, Dude, this is why we work here is remote. What do we need to have this for? So I am excited to talk about this because I think there's a lot of things that as our society shifts and workplace environment shift that this is a really popular topic. So let's dive in and start with just defining culture. Let's start there.
Mariam Meima 3:35
Okay, great. Yeah, let's define culture i because it's so vague, right? People are like my culture. I'm like, Okay, it's so touchy feely. Like, no, it doesn't have to be so touchy feely. My favorite way of thinking about culture is like the aggregate personality of our team. So I just like if we were going to personify the company, what's their attitude? Are we driven? Or are we laid back? Or are we both? Like, how do we deal with conflict? Are we snarky, or are we passive? Are we passive aggressive? Or are we just really direct and clear? And like, it's no big deal? How much drama do we deal with? How are we hyper forming? So just thinking about essentially the personality of the company, and inevitably, the culture of our business drives results. And so depending on what we want to be known for in the marketplace, we need to backup and look at our culture to make sure that we are aligning, like make sure that there's a through line of how we're treating one another, how we're relating to each other, and then therefore, how we're showing up with our clients.
Kiva Slade 4:42
I love that you made that connection. I think that's something that's often missed, is that connection between the internal and really the external, and you're just so focused on our clients and everything but you actually need that team to actually buy in and have that same agreement and alignment, so that the focus on the clients actually yield you the results that you're hoping for. So I love that you made that connection between the two. So let's dive into the common pitfalls related to culture because I feel there's I don't know many of them. And it just seems again, with workplaces with different age ranges and things that there seem to be even more pitfalls than we might be aware of, because we might have blinders. So I'd love to hear your take, though on the common pitfall.
Mariam Meima 5:35
Yes, I think that like, overall, the main pitfall is ignoring culture, and just pretending it's not there or not addressing it, not consciously managing it, because a culture is going to exist as there's no company without a culture, even if it's a solopreneur. But every company has a culture, the question is, are we consciously designing it? Or are we just letting it evolve over time? So that's the massive, overarching pitfall is just ignoring it. I think within that there are a lot like you were saying, like there's just blinders. And so what are the common blinders, I think that there's usually people with outsized personalities, and that will absolutely start to shape the culture, people will either respond well, and be attracted to those people or not really respond well, and if so feel more repelled by those people.
But having large personalities, especially if there's large personalities, that are delivering results, there's usually a lot of excuses made for not necessarily needing to have conversations with a person. And I'm all for everybody being their true authentic self. I'm about that. So I'm not here to make anyone smaller. What I think is helpful, though, is for people especially who have larger impact on those around them are more aware that they become increasingly aware of what that is, and that they're matching their engagements with team members to the desired culture in the company. So ignoring those large personalities or kind of letting them just exist without keeping them. I don't want to say in check, I just want to say like really honoring how we want to operate here. And so maybe the founder or the owner has difficulty with difficult conversations. And so they're not going to someone say you can't be rude to this person. Like, I want you to have all your opinions in the whole world, I just want you to do it with a little bit more compassion, or a little bit more curiosity make space for other people as well.
Kiva Slade 7:34
I love that though. And I love that you said something that I don't think sometimes solopreneurs in particular think about is, there is a culture, even if you're by yourself, there is still a culture for your business. And when you bring in a VA or you bring in someone else to your team, like they are looking to you for what that culture is and like you said, it's either being defined by you know, actually being proactive in it or No, it just kind of organically appears. We just deal with as it is. But I love that is that rate just a real conscious reminder that culture does exist, even if we don't think it exists. It is there. And we need to be more intentional about making sure we are nurturing that part of it that we actually do want instead of allowing other parts to maybe grow up like a weed and take over. So yeah, I love that. And yes, the large personalities, who I think we've all at least worked with one. It's like, no one will talk to that person. No, they're like, they get the job done. It's okay. Here like, it's not okay, they are crushing souls every day. Like, yeah, oh, well, it's gonna be okay. And it's like, it's so not okay.
Mariam Meima 8:55
Right. Yeah, because I've had at work, there was a company that had a culture of a team of five people, and they were friends. They just liked hanging out. They liked spending time together, and they hired someone who was in an accounting role. And this person would come into the office and literally wouldn't acknowledge wouldn't make eye contact, people would say hello, and this person wouldn't even respond. It was just not this person's personality. This person was more introverted. So they would literally walk through the world and I'm pretty sure they honestly weren't even hearing people say hello. But for this team, there was like, all of a sudden this like, they were like making space for this person. And if you hire one person like that, and you don't have the conversation of hey, here's how we do things here. We greet each other in the morning, we acknowledge each other, we exchange even if it's just one minute, just take a moment and spend time as humans before we dive into our work. Without that, then this person comes in and then the next person sees that oh, that's that's accepted here. Okay, well, that in that case, some mornings I'll say hello, and some mornings I won't and then all of a sudden Do you have a team of 10? And there's such a broad range now of personalities. And it actually dilutes our ability to be aligned and therefore be effective and collaborate with agility.
Kiva Slade 10:11
Right? Definitely. So in light of that, though, what are some strategies that companies can use to preserve their culture as the scale? Because that scenario, right there sounds so far like, you don't know what you're going to walk into every morning? Like, yes, we talking today or not talking today? Are we saying hello or not saying hello, or it might even feel like some parts of the group or cliques? And you know, you're like, those five are talking. But these three aren't? And these two are like, I don't know. But I just want to please everyone. So I'm talking to them on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but not on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, you know, you're looking at that, what should companies do to just really preserve that culture, as they start bringing in more people in sometimes quickly bringing in more people, you know, if they have to ramp up in terms of hiring, so I'd love to hear, what should they do even like from the small person all the way up to the big company?
Mariam Meima 11:10
Yes, yes. So I think it starts with articulating what do we want our culture to be. And so some people do that through values, sometimes it can be through personality traits that we want the business to have. And so that doesn't mean everyone has to be clones of one another, it just means what are the types of behaviors that we want to pull out of our team members. So articulating, it helps, definitely have a lot of strategies of how to go about doing that. But if you have a team and your let me think about how to best to boil it down, if people want me to kind of run this for themselves, I would say, maybe just have an honest conversation about how do we currently operate. And I guess that's the other if I back up just slightly, the other common pitfall is being dishonest with ourselves about our culture. And so people might think that they're very kind, but really, what's really going on here, so if you have an honest conversation with a whole team, about how we're doing, and for larger teams, we just break into focus groups and just say, what words would you use to describe how we work here? And you can do that by survey or focus groups, live conversation, but just do the work to articulate how do we do things here, what's our culture, and then reinforce it at every step of the game? So onboarding, for sure. Meeting culture for sure. Policies and Procedures. I like what you have in the opening of every one of your podcasts around how to break things in so that they're understandable. What's your word? It's like executional. Is that? Is that your word? Yeah. Make it that way. Yes. So that's how it is with culture as well. So how do we make it executable? And then especially for newer employees, just very, very frequent feedback around? How are they matching the culture? And where are they missing? And if they're missing, really share the why behind it.
So I remember when I was onboarding, my first assistant, she was taking over a lot of the communication with my clients. And so that was a big thing for me to handover. So getting the tone right, really matter. That was very much my brand. And I needed her to be an extension of me. So there were certain things like, I needed her to not apologize, but still take personal responsibility. So I needed to teach her things about my communication style that I've never even thought about before. But I did that by having her copy me on a bunch of emails in the beginning that we just sit down at the end of the week. And it's like, no shame. Let's just go through it. Like where did I feel like you really shined and where were some things where I feel like we could make some tweaks and then why really stepping back and explaining the why. So I was teaching the the concepts or the philosophy behind my behaviors, so that it was easier to replicate. I think we can do that for people in any function. And so just make sure we're giving constant feedback, especially in the beginning. And then it becomes less frequent, but maybe it goes from daily to weekly and weekly to monthly, monthly to quarterly and so on. But then getting together as a team, like how do we feel like we're doing? are we holding true to what we want to be known for? And is there any, any changes that we need to make internally, so operationalizing it? I think, if anyone does performance reviews, it should definitely be reformed reinforced and performance reviews as well. I'll pause there. There are many other thoughts out there.
Kiva Slade 14:38
Those are all fabulous. And I love each and every one of those and especially around that beginning portion. I feel like so many of my colleagues, we commiserate I'll say around that, like people are onboarding and you're expecting, like, immediate full on absorption into the company and ready to roll, and it's like, no, there's parts of that culture, the values, the understanding the tone, as you said, that needs to be learned and taught and like you said, like, having that conversation around, hey, let's look at this past week and see where what went well, what we could tweak, you know, and what actually was maybe a total disaster. And we have to do more lately fix that being able and setting aside that time being purposeful in setting aside that time when you go to onboarding new people. So that that conversation and that feedback loop is happening. And it actually gets close for both sides. So I love that you shared that. And I have just another question. Because how do you feel like culture, and what we've been talking about in a lot of my, my listeners, my clients, some of them, it's not necessarily employees, they're bringing in contractors, you know, but even in that I personally feel culture still needs to be a part of it, and you know, things of that sort. But I'd love to hear your take on Are there any different things that they should do, because these people are not necessarily employees, but maybe just be in contractual roles. And the fact that sometimes there's, I know, we're talking company culture, but sometimes there's ethnic cultural differences, because of the variety of people that they might bring into a team. And so I know for like one client, we have team from the Philippines, Mauritius, Kenya, different time zones in the US, you know, so even in that with the cultural differences that can also exist. So I know that was loaded. So kind of makes you harder, maybe but you know, even around that, like the independent contractors, within people from differing nationalities?
Mariam Meima 17:06
Yes, exactly. So I think that it, all of those same best practices apply to all the concepts. So yes, to part time employees, temporary employees, contractors, people all around the globe, I work a lot with global teams. And so the question is, what's the common denominator that we want everyone to have, regardless of how long they're here? And how do we articulate that? And how do we bring people on board? And I think, especially when onboarding people from different geographies, different nationalities, different first languages, different cultures, we need to really partner with local people to make sure that what the way we're articulating it translates, because they might associate very different concepts with the word choices that we have to capture our culture. And so really, culture exists beyond words. And so if we just need to translate it for people, so obviously scaled down for contractors, we need to translate how what's our onboarding look like, for part time workers or temporary workers? But what is our onboarding look like for people who have a different first language or a different timezone or a different culture, in terms of ethnic culture? So all of those things apply.
And so I am a big believer in just trying to get out of our own way and put ourselves in that person's shoes and say, what did they really want to or need to understand in order to be successful here? And I believe we all are looking around to say, How do we do things here? How can I succeed? And we should be as employers making that as easy as possible for folks. And so it's just a question of, you know, spelling it out. And you mentioned earlier distributed teams, I think that that's becoming increasingly challenging, because people will have multiple screens open. And over here, I'm working for one company, and over here, I'm working for another company. And so how do we help people really lock in to the way that we do things here, knowing that we have very little control over their life, their work setup, how they're navigating all of that, and I think that's an ongoing question that I have is how to do that well, but I've seen some really creative ideas like one company, they, this seems random, but they gave every employee $200 credit to buy shoes in the company's color. Whatever, whatever your favorite shoe is. Some people had high heels. Some people have sneakers, some people, like everybody had their different shoe, but they all had a shoe in the company color, the color that they had branded, so finding different ways I think with physical setups to physical objects, I think help. But also little things like email signatures help give these subtle cues to everybody about how is it that we want to be interacting with one another?
Kiva Slade 20:04
Yeah, no, I love that. And there's a young lady I have like a monthly membership with her. But she really focuses on culture too. But like in those remote teams, and she has them, kind of like little questions that you can ask. So we have a min like in a random Slack channel. And it's, you know, like, what's your favorite? Like, what? What song would you really definitely sing at a karaoke bar? You know, and so it doesn't matter. Like where you are, like, there's just music. It's definitely universal. So it's funny to see like some people who are totally in two different continents, like have the same exact song like, oh, my gosh, Whitney Houston, I want to dance with somebody in your life. Yeah, wow. Little things like that, that you said, like, that just form almost even connection points between people, which I think helps translate when something maybe is a quick turnaround or something comes across maybe slightly terse, you know, and it's like, they start to remember where they have those commonalities. And it you know, kind of is a lot easier to talk about and discuss. But if you don't have those, those things are no mechanism in which for team to connect and learn those commonalities about each other, then, you know, it's like, they have nothing to know how they are like, Hey, I've talked to Miriam on Slack. I've never seen her, you know, except for this little tiny, teensy square of a picture. I don't know her voice or something else like that. But I know that she likes bananas over banana bread, you know, or something like that. Yeah. I think it's really like you said, even if it's things that seem quirky or weird, like shoes and the company's color, but those are things that help people connect and bond in feel a sameness you know, and I think that that's important. And I would love to see like the picture of everyone's shoes, like, I'm so intrigued. Now, like you said, it's like summer, high heels, high top sneakers, all the things. But even that choice of a shoe tells you more about that personality of that person, you know, so I think that's really cool.
Mariam Meima 22:14
Yeah, exactly. I like what you said about music. It's like, what do we care about here? And how do we make it easy for people to share those things and connect about on those levels?
Kiva Slade 22:25
Make it easy, and that's our job as, as business owners as that employer, you know, to make it easy for our teams to succeed. Because I think everyone wants to do that, you know, I mean, everyone has their have a horror story of someone who was absolutely terrible as a team member. But for the most part, people want to succeed and giving them the tools to empower them to do that. Makes it just so much easier for them.
Mariam Meima 22:53
So yeah, exactly. That's how I think about it is create the scaffolding so that they can be set up for success. And so yes, that's our job is create the conditions in which other people can thrive. And that's what culture essentially is.
Kiva Slade 23:09
Yes, I love it. And hey, it goes back to that importance of leadership. So I'm so thankful for you, Miriam, and just sharing those really valuable gems, because I felt like there's lots of notes to take away and not on like, okay, now I see how I can do that a little differently. And so I am so grateful for just everything that you've shared today. And I think this is, like, again, so valuable as so many people are looking to scale in what does that really look like to start to broaden the scope of where your business is now? Whether you are a team of one or a team of 21 or 121? You know, there's definitely things to keep in mind as that process goes forward. So, I am so grateful for your knowledge and your expertise, and that you joined us today to share it. So um, I have one other last question, because now I am curious. Do you like regular bananas? Or do you actually like banana bread?
Mariam Meima 24:14
Oh my gosh, I think bananas are gross and delicious. Like it's like the whole range and I'm like, now I'm like looking at like why do I have such a range? Depends on the day sometimes I'm like the most delicious thing the whole gross of banana. But my default mode is like nasty. But then the banana ready? Yes. All day every day my sister makes some really good banana bread.
Kiva Slade 24:41
I am so with you on that. I'm like frozen bananas in a smoothie. Yes. Like banana bread. Yes. I am rarely the person to just grab a banana as my fruit of choice.
Mariam Meima 24:53
I guess because there's so often I leave them too long and then they get mushy. I think that's why happens. Yeah.
Kiva Slade 25:01
well, at least now we know we can eat banana bread all day every day. Awesome. So I thank you again so much. And if you guys want to get in touch with Miriam, you can definitely we will include the links to her website, as well as her LinkedIn. So make sure that you reach out and keep getting more and more information on how you and your team can continue to preserve culture as you scale your business. So thanks for tuning into this episode, and we will see you next time. Bye. Thanks for tuning in to another episode of Collab with Kiva. I'm wildly cheering you on as you go forth and execute data and operational efficiencies in your business. If you need additional support, connect with me via my website, the516collaborative.com your reviews on Apple are appreciated. See you next week.
Meet Kiva Slade - the Founder and CEO of The 516 Collaborative. With a unique background in high-power politics on Capitol Hill and sixteen years as a homeschooling mama, Kiva found her calling in the online business world as a trusted guide for entrepreneurs looking to build the business of their dreams.
Kiva's work began behind the scenes, orchestrating the back end of businesses and managing teams. But her inner data diva couldn't help but notice that small businesses needed help harnessing the power of data for growth. So she and her team set out to uncover and tidy up the data required to enable clients to grow their businesses confidently and easily.