How does a company’s growth culture evolving?

The main task of business is growing

You work in a small startup or a large corporation, the main task of business is growing — growth in the number of clients, revenue growth, profit growth etc.

But to achieve new goals and not to lose control over what is happening on the way, it is necessary to form and develop a culture of growth in the company.

Often the first place is corporate culture, which includes: well-equipped office, table tennis, consoles, free drinks, and other cookies.

Unfortunately, this is not a real attribute of the company’s culture and does not correlate in any way with its growth plans. This is just a simple way to manipulate the comfort of employees.

The real culture of growth is much smarter and more complicated. It consists of three key components:

- Growth systems;
- Goals and ways to achieve them;
- Psychological safety.

1. The growth system

If you want to build a culture of growth within a company, you need to increase discipline and create a functional system within which growth is continuously being worked on.

Creating a growth system should not be a sudden event. It is a gradual, evolutionary process that takes place inside the company in parallel with its development.

As in any other corporate system, there should be a person in the growth system, who will be responsible for the introduction of discipline, team building, and achievement of results.

At the initial stage, such a person is called Growth Manager. But the more the company the more position of growth manager evolves: Head of Growth, Growth Director, VP of Growth, Chief Growth Officer.

As part of the growing discipline, new requirements for talented employees are needed:

1. Focus on results;
2. T-skills and desire to learn;
3. Understanding of Agile and Lean methodologies;
4. Metrics and data orientation;
5. The scientific approach to experimentation;
6. Product obsession;
7. Focus on clients.

The necessary competencies of the participants of the growth system can be different: programming, analytics, design, marketing, product management, sales etc.

It is essential that the company not only recruits new people with suitable talents but also develops these talents from existing employees.

2. Goals and ways to achieve them

If you want that culture of growth doesn’t become a meaningless ritual, it must be closely linked to the company’s goals and approaches to achieving them.

It doesn’t matter what kind of goal-setting system you use (KPI, OKR, Smart goals). It is important that the work on achieving the goals and results has been deeply integrated into the growth culture.

The same is right in the opposite direction. Using the OKR method to set goals in a company that does not have a growth culture, you risk turning the work of your employees into a mess. That self-influence will also hurt the results.

To work effectively to achieve your growth goals, you need to apply a non-linear approach to prioritization. Under this approach, existing priority assessments for each goal should be multiplied by the growth impact factor. Thus, you will be able to identify the most important targets for the company within the planning period.

3. Psychological safety

According to Google’s research, the psychological safety of employees is a critical component of successful teamwork.

Psychological safety means that team members are not afraid to take responsibility and risk within their goals and objectives. Working within a team, they feel safer than working alone.

This allows them to start a process of continuous experimentation and learning in a team that is so important for growth.

The process in a psychologically safe environment looks like this:

“No fear of making a mistake”, “learning by mistake”, “want to share new ideas”, “new experiments, innovative solutions”.

In situations where there is no psychological safety, team members fear criticism and mistakes that as a result, it prevents them from experimenting and discovering new and original approaches to growth.

Create and maintain a comfortable, open atmosphere of mutual respect in your team. So that everyone can share their ideas without fear of being criticized. This is very important for the development of a culture of growth.

The combination of a well-functioning system, a focus on goals and psychological security will allow you to create a culture that promotes growth and is ready to scale up your business.

Extra:

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