Organizations rarely lose momentum because of strategy alone. More often, growth stalls because the culture that fueled early success doesn’t scale with the business. Leaders know this instinctively, yet many underestimate how fragile culture becomes in periods of rapid expansion, integration, or transformation. Research confirms the stakes: toxic culture is 10.4 times more predictive of attrition than compensation (MIT Sloan Management Review, 2022).
The implications are clear. Maintaining culture is not about slogans, perks, or one-off events—it is about consistently reinforcing behaviors through leaders, systems, and structures. The challenge is execution: how do leaders scale something as nuanced and intangible as “culture” across increasingly complex organizations?
Why Culture Becomes Harder to Maintain During Growth
As organizations grow, the operating environment introduces natural friction:
- Rapid hiring and onboarding dilute shared norms if new employees never experience the behaviors that define success.
- Geographic dispersion and remote work weaken rituals and create gaps in communication.
- Mergers, acquisitions, and partnerships bring competing value systems that need harmonization.
- Incentive misalignment undermines stated values—leaders may promote collaboration while rewarding individual performance.
These forces erode trust and create a gap between what organizations say they value and what employees actually experience. Closing that gap requires intentional design.
The McKinsey Influence Model: Four Levers to Shape Culture
Among the most enduring frameworks for cultural transformation is the McKinsey Influence Model. It identifies four levers that reliably shift mindsets and behaviors:
Foster Understanding and Conviction
Employees must understand the “why” behind cultural priorities. Leaders should communicate the link between culture and business performance, making the case in terms of strategy, customers, and competitive advantage. A one-page Culture Narrative—anchored in 5–7 observable “we do/we don’t” behaviors—helps reduce abstraction and ensures consistent understanding.
Role Modeling by Leaders
Culture is not taught as much as it is observed. When leaders consistently embody values, employees mirror their actions. Appointing “culture carriers” across levels ensures role modeling is visible beyond the C-suite. Rituals such as decision post-mortems or customer story reviews provide public opportunities to reinforce behaviors.
Build Skills and Capabilities
Maintaining culture requires more than inspiration—it requires skill. Training managers in values-based feedback and embedding behavioral expectations into recruiting, onboarding, and promotion processes translates culture into practice. Short, frequent micro-clinics for managers are often more effective than annual workshops.
Reinforce with Formal Mechanisms
What organizations measure and reward sends a powerful signal. Aligning OKRs, performance reviews, and recognition programs with cultural priorities ensures systems support, rather than undercut, stated values. Leading indicators—such as recognition frequency or decision transparency scores—allow leaders to spot cultural drift before it shows up in attrition or performance.
Real World Example: Closing the Gap Between Values and Systems
A professional services firm was experiencing attrition despite competitive compensation and market-leading benefits. Exit interviews revealed vague dissatisfaction with leadership credibility and misalignment between values and day-to-day experience.
Mapping stated values against actual behaviors revealed two gaps:
- Inconsistent leadership behavior—executives spoke of “candor,” yet team forums penalized dissent.
- Misaligned incentives—sales recognition emphasized short-term bookings despite a stated value of “customer trust.”
The leadership team applied the four levers of the Influence Model:
- Understanding: They codified six observable behaviors in a Culture Narrative and cascaded them through manager-led discussions.
- Role Modeling: A group of culture carriers hosted monthly forums where executives demonstrated candor and invited challenge.
- Skills: Managers completed micro-clinics on feedback and decision hygiene, embedding practices into performance reviews.
- Reinforcement: Quarterly bonuses incorporated a “values multiplier” tied to customer trust and transparency metrics.
Within nine months, the firm reported measurable improvements: regretted attrition declined, employee engagement scores rose, and client satisfaction improved. The critical insight was that culture could not be preserved through messaging alone—it required system-level reinforcement.
Actionable Framework: The 4×4 Play
Leaders can operationalize the Influence Model with a simple 4×4 play:
1. Define Behaviors
Create a one-page Culture Narrative with 5–7 behaviors that reflect core values. Cascade through team discussions and confirm understanding with two key questions: What changes for us? and What will you stop or start?
2. Demonstrate Values
Identify culture carriers across levels and empower them to lead two visible rituals per month that showcase values in action.
3. Develop Managers
Run quarterly micro-clinics on values-based coaching and embed cultural expectations into hiring and onboarding processes.
4. Drive Reinforcement
Align OKRs, recognition, and promotion criteria with cultural priorities. Track leading indicators such as recognition frequency or decision transparency.
Closing Thoughts: Culture as a Competitive Advantage
Maintaining company culture during periods of growth is less about preserving a set of slogans and more about codifying and reinforcing the behaviors that drive performance. Leaders must treat culture as an operating system—one that requires regular updates, visible modeling, and alignment across structures.
The payoff is significant. Gallup research shows that highly engaged teams deliver 23% higher profitability (Gallup, 2024), while PwC’s global survey highlights culture as both a competitive advantage (69%) and a change enabler (72%) (PwC, 2021). The evidence is overwhelming: culture is not peripheral—it is performance.
For leaders, the imperative is clear. Codify behaviors, role-model them visibly, develop the skills to sustain them, and align systems to reinforce them. Culture will not scale by accident, but it can scale by design.
Sam Palazzolo, Principal Officer @ The Javelin Institute
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