Systems will expand, reporting lines will shift, business units will professionalise – these are all great things. But how do you hold on to the core ethos of your culture as you grow? 

Make culture your setpoint

As a founder team, Sparteo is our second venture, having successfully exited our previous business in 2017. This means we could take learnings from our previous business, Cerise Media Group, and get clear on how to do thing differently in terms of our culture.

A company's culture is like a constitution. And at Sparteo, we wanted to embed it into the fabric of our strategy. That means culture is the setpoint for leadership, behaviours, and processes. Our intention was to build a culture that's super-actionable at both the individual and team levels. We wanted our culture to be evident in our daily actions, and easily relatable for our people, customers and partners.

Values first

We’ve grounded our culture in our values: we are hungry, we’re obsessed with data, we’re always collectively driven, we’re problem solvers, and we say what we do. This means that while we attract a certain type of person, these values speak to them in such a way that gives them permission to be themselves. Because we’re clear on who we are, people can easily identify and connect with our culture as we scale.

Communicate your culture clearly

Documenting our culture from the outset was vital, making sure we could communicate it effectively, using the bedrock of our culture deck. It’s our holy grail: we use our culture deck to drive decision-making across the board, shape our hiring process, and fuel performance reviews and team growth.

We communicate our culture at every touchpoint of the employee journey. It starts with your interview as we know skills can be taught, but fitting into our team is what matters; in fact it’s helped streamline our onboarding process.

We also use our culture deck at company days; they’re a great opportunity to bring the company's culture to life. They provide an immersive setting where team members, especially newer ones, can see our culture in action, and we can reinforce the company’s values through interactions and real-life situations, allowing new colleagues to gradually absorb the essence of the organisation. These events promote a genuine experience of the culture; “show don’t tell” is key.

A culture of leadership

It’s essential for us that as leaders – we’re a founding team of four - we embody Sparteo’s culture across all our behaviours and actions. What we want to see in our people – empathy, listening, accountability – we need to model in abundance. Especially as a key value is to say what we do and we do what we say.

This is vital too as your business grows, and you have less facetime with team members; we know the best place to start is with us. So as we’ve had to adapt some areas of our culture – in terms of workplace style, coming out of true startup mode, organisational structure – we make sure as founders, we’re modelling the central elements of a value-based culture.

Check in with your culture consistently

As leaders, it’s essential you give yourself the capacity to check-in with your company culture often. For startups, agility is in your DNA so as your organisation changes and grows, your culture has to keep up with it, making sure it’s working for your people, is understood by customers, has translated across different markets.

While I pay attention to industry shifts like Amazon’s return-to-office policy, I believe that Sparteo’s remote work model is working well for us. I’m always open to adapting if needed, but any changes would be driven by what’s best for our culture, people and productivity

We’ve designed a workplace culture that supports collaboration, drives innovation, and offers a collective purpose to our people; it’s how you lay the foundation for your startup’s long-term growth and success.