I seem to be born a farmer by the slight of my grandmother’s hand.
Companies are like farms.
Culture is their soil.
Employees are their crops.
Growing too fast is risky because you are cycling through too many crops and your soil becomes unusable without replenishing the nutrients in the soil.
This happens at companies that grow too fast.
If you are not tending your culture you risk creating a shallow culture. Or you allow the creation of splintered micro cultures each ruled by a clique.
People often think they need to break up the ground to get things to grow. This may be misguided since there are whole ecosystems in the ground you just upended that are now dead. If you give them time to maturate by laying down a covering on the ground, those microbes, worms, fungi and other living things will grow and prosper creating a soil that you can work with at a quality you couldn't create on your own.
Sure you'll make mistakes about hires, but if you tend the culture they should not do much damage with their roots when you pull them out. (And you better pull them out.)
This is deep, and could be misunderstood so I will say it again.
Your culture is your garden. Growing healthy, happy, productive people should be your only mission; because everything that you want is the fruit of their effort, not yours.
Go grow something today.
If you are still reading this, I want to follow you on twitter. Hit me up @wtrsld
