It’s common knowledge that when organizations put emphasis on creating and nurturing strong company culture, they increase chances of overall success. But how can this be achieved when a significant organizational change — a merger, acquisition, leadership overhaul or new investors — looms on the horizon? Here are five ways to safeguard your thriving culture as a transition takes place.
Prep new stakeholders
The first step in ensuring your strong company culture remains intact is to proactively work with new stakeholders so they understand not only your culture’s prominent role, but the work that went into building it and how it’s maintained. Make sure they commit to upholding your culture standards.
Update current team
Your culture is nothing without your team, and if it’s a good one, your team is likely both proud of and protective of it. As early as possible, loop them into the new changes coming with an emphasis on how those alterations will positively impact the business and contribute to its cultural health.
Set transparent standards
It’s one thing to say the culture will be protected, but you’ll benefit yourself and the whole business by figuring out ways to measure success, and then share those results with everyone. Whether it’s through awards, periodic survey results, or some other metric, visible results can serve as organization-wide rallying points.
Contributed photo / Kyle BryantGet feedback from all stakeholders
You’ll never know how things are going unless you regularly ask how people feel about the changes. If your business’ culture truly was strong pre-change, then you probably won’t have a hard time soliciting honest feedback, and people will want to share their true thoughts on developments.
Be flexible
If the organizational change is a substantial one, know that you may need to adopt new strategies to uphold past performance. If “the end justifies the means,” then get comfortable with trying different approaches. At the end of the day, if healthy culture is your goal, you should be okay with pursuing whatever avenues are necessary in getting there.
Kyle Bryant co-founded Market Street Partners, a local CPA firm, along with Kevin Rose in 2016. Routinely awarded for its strong culture, the organization continues to earn such distinctions after its 2023 merger with Smith + Howard.