We all know how hard many of us are pushing.
Revenue targets; margin pressure; cost control; cash flow: it can feel as if anything that isn’t directly linked to the numbers is a luxury.
It often means conversations about culture, values and behaviour quietly slide down the agenda.
The uncomfortable truth, though, is that if you ignore culture, you are ignoring one of your biggest performance levers.
I regularly meet leaders who are totally focused on growth – while tolerating:
- silo behaviour
- passive resistance
- inconsistent accountability
- talented but toxic high performers
- leaders who say one thing and model another
…and then wonder why executing the strategy feels like wading through mud.
So how is culture commercially useful?
Culture isn’t the ‘fluffy stuff’ – it’s ‘just the way we do things around here’. And if you ‘don’t believe in culture’, don’t kid yourself. Whether you design it or not, for better or for worse, you have one.
Better make it a good one, eh?
Here are four practical shifts I see in high-performing SMEs.
1. Be clear what you’re building
Don’t start with posters. Start with outcomes and ask yourselves:
- What kind of behaviour will deliver our strategy?
- What needs to change?
- How will we measure that change?
Please – don’t come up with twelve values. Three or four is plenty. And make them behavioural:
‘Trust’ by itself means nothing: ‘Act on the assumption that colleagues are competent and well-intentioned’ means something – and you can see it happen, and challenge when it doesn’t.
Create 3 or 4 clearly observable behaviour statements for each of your one-word ‘values’. Because if it can’t be seen, it can’t be managed.
2. Treat culture like infrastructure
You wouldn’t leave your financial systems to chance. Don’t leave behaviour to chance And don’t delegate it to HR: the minute culture becomes ‘an HR thing’, it dies. In the organisations that get this right, the CEO and senior team own it. Publicly.
Culture should show up in:
- role design
- accountabilities
- performance conversations
- promotion decisions
- who gets challenged
- who gets rewarded
If ‘teamwork’ is a value but your bonus system rewards individual achievements, don’t be surprised when people compete instead of collaborate.
3. Align culture with accountability
This is where many founder-led businesses struggle. In the early phase, culture often reflects the founder’s personality, but as you scale, it needs to reflect the organisation’s needs.
That means:
- clear role accountabilities, built around the organisation’s needs, not the preferences of individual role-holders
- clearly-stated, measurable outputs, qualitative as well as quantitative
- individual, not shared responsibility
- no hiding behind personality – culture isn’t just about being nice.
A healthy culture is about creating a system where people deliver what the business actually requires – consistently.
4. Don’t announce it – walk it…
The moment you publish values, your team starts watching.
- If you talk about ‘respect’ but roll your eyes in meetings…
- If you talk about ‘ownership’ but override decisions…
- If you talk about ‘accountability’ but make excuses…
…you’ve just taught everyone what really matters.
And when you get it wrong (you will)? Own it. Apologise. Reset. That does more to build credibility than pretending to be perfect.
Culture isn’t ‘branding’
The founders I admire most don’t treat culture as branding. They treat it as stewardship.
They understand that they are shaping the personality of their organisation – something that will outlast them.
When culture and structure align, you don’t just “make the numbers”. You build an organisation that can keep making them, naturally and enjoyably, without exhausting everyone in the process.
If you’re feeling the strain of growth, it might not be a strategy problem. It might just be a matter of culture and accountability. Worth a conversation?