Making Growth a Culture Builder

My wife was graduating from college and in her first job when we got married. So naturally, many of our date night conversations revolved around what we were doing with our jobs, careers, and day-to-day tasks. 

She worked at a local online university. They were small but had big ambitions. In hindsight, they were on the leading edge of what would become higher education norms. 

The longer she worked for them, the more my conversations with her began to be more focused. I’d ask questions like “with a college degree, don’t you think you should be paid more?” or “why aren’t they hiring more people?” and “are there opportunities for a promotion?”.

The funny thing is she didn’t care about any of that. Why?

Growth.

She bought into the growth story. To her, watching the number of students enrolling in the online school was so exciting, everything else was secondary. She felt a part of something bigger, she felt ownership in the company. The result of her everyday efforts WAS the reward she was seeking.

The challenges that growth presented to my wife and her team daily weren’t a negative, they were a positive! How do we grow? How do we scale? How many people can we enroll? How many scholastic programs can we roll out? We just grew 100% YOY, how do we grow 200% next year?!

Growth was fun! It was exciting! It was contagious!

As I’ve built my own business, I’ve kept these lessons in mind. As a startup, you won’t have all the answers for your employees but keeping them involved in the process will make a difference.

Hiring the right people for your business will allow them to see the same potential you see as the founder.

What can you do to foster this mentality?

If you let your employees become part of the big picture, instead of being an impediment to culture-building, growth can be the strongest culture-building tool available to you.