How to make culture a growth asset (not a side project)

In fast-growing companies, culture often starts strong — built on passion, purpose, and proximity. But as teams scale, merge, or shift under pressure from funding or acquisition, the culture that once felt natural can start to fray. The casual dress-code, office ping-pong and regular socials that once created a tight-knit community now feel clumsy and forced.

And too often, culture is treated as a side project — something to revisit once the next round closes, the new structure settles, or the fire-fighting stops.

But here’s the truth: culture is not a soft “nice-to-have.” It’s a critical driver of sustainable growth. When culture is intentional, it creates alignment, trust, and energy. When it’s ignored, it creates confusion, resistance, and hidden drag on performance.

Why Culture Gets Overlooked

1. It’s complex – Culture can feel fuzzy and hard to measure, especially compared to financial metrics.

   
   

2. It’s not urgent… until it is – Teams often wait until engagement dips, conflict spikes, or attrition bites to pay attention.

   
   

3. It feels personal – Leaders worry about opening a can of worms they don’t know how to close.

But the businesses that grow best don’t wait for a crisis. They treat culture as core infrastructure, not decoration.

Real Stories of Culture in Motion

Klarna’s Culture Reset

In 2022, Swedish fintech giant Klarna faced criticism after laying off 10% of its workforce via prerecorded video messages. Internally, the once high-energy culture was feeling the strain of hyper-growth and shifting market pressures. In response, Klarna launched a cultural reboot — creating forums for open dialogue, revisiting its values with employee input, and investing in leadership coaching. While recovery is ongoing, the move signalled a shift from "move fast and break things" to more human, values-led scaling.

Canva’s Culture Under Pressure

Australian design platform Canva has been one of the tech world’s successes — but with explosive global growth came new challenges. As teams spread across time zones and cultures, maintaining their famously vibrant and inclusive culture required more than just virtual team drinks. Canva zoomed in on clarity — refreshing their company values with broad employee participation and embedding them into rituals, onboarding, and decision-making frameworks. The result: a culture that evolves with scale, rather than being eroded by it.

What Strong Culture Actually Feels Like

When culture is working, everything feels just a little easier. People ask the awkward questions early, not after a launch fails. Collaboration isn’t a forced process — it’s second nature. Ideas are shared, feedback is honest, and energy goes into solving problems, not protecting turf. Leaders spend less time untangling misunderstandings and more time unlocking potential. It’s not perfect, but it’s productive — and it creates the conditions for people and the business to grow together.

3 Ways to Start Making Culture a Growth Asset

→ Get objective insight – Use a tool like the Growth Culture Scorecard to see where your culture stands today. Gut feel isn’t enough.

→ Start small, but strategic – Focus on one cultural tension that’s slowing your team down. Name it, and address it head-on.

→ Build culture skills – Don’t just define values — give your team the tools to live them, especially under pressure.

What This Looks Like in Practice

A small tech company we worked with was scaling fast, but under the surface, silos were growing and tension was building. Instead of launching a generic values campaign, we ran a Culture Capture to surface the real story — where people were aligned, and where the cracks were.

The result? A tailored plan that gave leaders the language, behaviours, and skills to reset how they worked together — increasing trust, speeding up decision-making, and improving engagement.

Join the Make It Human Club for instant access to a library of culture tools to create the conditions for sustainable growth as well as fortnightly Coffee & Culture virtual meet-ups to share experiences and build connections.