There’s something special about a small, purpose-led business: the culture. People know each other, decisions happen quickly, the founder’s passion is visible and infectious, and the customers can feel what makes the organisation different.
Then the business grows; more people, more locations, more customers, more processes, more layers of management.
Growth is exciting but it creates a challenge that doesn’t get talked about enough; How do you scale the business without losing the culture that made it special in the first place?
What the research tells us.
Research from McKinsey in 2025 highlights how easily a clear sense of purpose can get lost in the execution of growth. Their research found that 26% of corporate start-up failures were linked to cultural issues; while organisations that emphasise common purpose are more likely to have clear direction and stronger organisational health.
Research from ICAEW in 2025 makes a similar point; as businesses grow, leaders need to think deliberately about how culture and team dynamics evolve, ensuring people understand not just WHAT they are doing, but WHY. The same applies within business units and teams of larger organisations; the WHY makes all the difference when it comes to retention, commitment and productivity.
So what needs to happen?
1. The founder can’t BE the culture anymore.
As a small business, the culture is often shared and role-modelled through being in close contact with the founder. That doesn’t scale as you grow.
The things that made the organisation special need to be specifically uncovered and named, so that they can be made visible and intentional; leadership behaviours, decision making, ways of working and communication styles. They all build to create a culture that exists beyond the personality of the Founder.
2. Purpose has to become personal.
A statement on a website or a passionate speech by the founder isn’t enough. It has to become personal for the people who work there: ”What does this mean for me in my role?”.
Deloitte found that while 84% of employees said that it was important for their work at an organisation to feel meaningful, only 52% said that the external communication about a purpose matched with the internal reality.
The gap between what we say and what our people experience, is where culture gets tested.
3. Don’t underestimate the small stuff
Culture is shaped by everything; not just the leadership or HR. It’s seen in how a person manages a difficult conversation or how a team leader responds when something goes wrong or what action are praised and recognised within teams.
Harvard Business Review makes a similar argument; culture is shaped by organisational systems and everyday behaviours, not communication alone.
Every single person shapes the culture of a business with each action and decision they make. The role of the leaders is to make sure that everyone is aware of the power they hold and uses it in a positive way.
4. Protect what matters, but don’t freeze it.
Scaling culture isn’t about trying to preserve everything as it was; the business is changing and the approach to the culture has to adapt too. The key is to understand what is essential to who the business is, and what needs to evolve to allow the business to become what you’re trying to be.
It’s about finding ways to make the essential stuff repeatable, but not clinical. Not more posters, not trying to stay in the past – but growing the best bits so that they get stronger too.
To wrap up, business growth shouldn’t mean losing the magic of a founder-led culture, it should mean finding a way to share with more people.
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