Building a Team Culture That Reflects Company Values

When I joined Khan Academy, we were just four people in a small office, united by a vision of bringing free education to everyone, everywhere. Over the years, we grew to hundreds of employees, reaching over 100 million students worldwide. This exponential growth brought a significant challenge: how do you scale a team without losing the culture and values that made the organization special? The most crucial lesson I learned was that culture doesn't scale automatically - it demands constant attention and effort. The best way I found to attend to culture was to treat your culture like a product. You have to design it. As we grew, it became increasingly important to consider how to help team members learn about and carry the culture forward. Here are three strategies that helped us maintain our culture during rapid growth: 1. Over-communicate the Mission and the Principles that Guide it: As our team grew, we doubled down on ensuring everyone felt connected to our mission and understood our principles. Three of the most important principles were to focus on the student, Always be learning, and deliver exceptional ROI for donors. We regularly shared stories of how our work impacted students' lives, and what we learned from failures and successes, and calculated the number of learning minutes to keep the team aligned with our "why" and “how” and motivated by our shared purpose. 2. Create Rituals that Reinforce Values: We have meaningful rituals, such as starting meetings with student success stories and celebrating what teams learned, not just what they accomplished when we gave status updates. We also organized a yearly talent show and encouraged people to showcase new talents and skills. These practices served as constant reminders of our principles in action. 3. Adapt, but Stay True to Core Values: Growth necessitated changes in processes, tools, and communication methods. For example, we used to be able to share what we were learning during all-hands meetings, but at some point, it became impossible for each team to give an update. As part of our commitment to learning, we began to document our learnings and shared long-form asynchronous updates with everyone. We then shared summaries during all-hands meetings. Scaling a team while preserving its culture is challenging, and we weren’t always successful, either. But we were lucky that the team let us know when they thought we weren’t living up to the mission or principles and encouraged us to make changes.  It is achievable if you remain open to feedback and stay focused on core principles. What strategies have you employed to maintain culture as your team or organization grew?

Your culture is the invisible force that shapes how people feel about your brand. And it starts with your leadership — → The way you hire and train → How you embed values into your work → The processes you deploy → The way you demonstrate who you are …these subtle cues convey so much about your brand. Because in a world of copycat products and services… …culture is your secret weapon. It's the DNA that can make your company so special. Here's how to harness it: ↓ 1️⃣ Live out your values Don't just write your company principles on a mission statement and forget about them. Embody them. And actively reward team members who embody them. At Motto, we recognize when someone demonstrates our values through kudos, performance, bonuses, and other recognitions. Whether it's showing radical candor or going the extra mile, we celebrate it. 2️⃣ Rally around a Big Idea Every company worth remembering has a Big Idea that clearly and concisely defines their reasons for existing. Express this in big ways — how your company operates as a whole — and in small ways. For example, the way you end team meetings. We sign off with "Do big things" to remind everyone they're here to do exceptional work. 3️⃣ Embed your values in hiring Your job postings and career page should reflect your culture’s transparency and values. We, for instance, outline each step of our hiring process upfront. This helps us proactively recruit candidates who align with our values and can handle our high-performance environment (while screening out those who can’t). 4️⃣ Proactively invest in growth Each of your employees is an asset. Give team members chances to learn and teach others what they’ve learned. On Friday, we give one hour for our team to take classes and share their knowledge with the team. It builds their skills *and* confidence in leadership. 5️⃣ Use failure as fuel When you hit a wall, always see it as a chance to innovate and bounce back even greater. Embed this into your company DNA more than anything else. Your culture isn't just internal. It shows up in every interaction with customers, partners, and the public. So, nurture it carefully. The culture you nurture today is the brand you have tomorrow.

Early in my leadership journey, I confused clarity with buy-in. I thought if I could just articulate the mission perfectly the team would feel it. Own it. Run with it. So I’d tell the story with all my enthusiasm, build the deck, show how it that aligned with our values and goals. I’d polish one-pagers and kick off meetings with vision talk. And for a while, it felt like it worked. But underneath the nods and smiles, nothing really changed. One team member put it to me gently: "I love the direction, but I’m not sure how to live this out in the day-to-day." That’s when it clicked: -You don’t build culture by announcement. -You build it by cultivation. Culture isn’t a memo. It’s a harvest. And harvests don’t begin with words. They begin with seeds. 🌱 What I Missed (and What I Learned) *When you cast vision without inviting ownership, you grow compliance. I was trying to download a belief system like software. But people don’t change that way. They shift through conversation, reflection, experience, and practice. Here’s the agricultural metaphor that changed how I lead: Culture is a crop. Healthy crops need: -Seeds (ideas you plant slowly) -Soil (relational trust and emotional safety) -Water (stories, reinforcement, and feedback) -Sunlight (visibility, air time, modeling) -Time (yes, more time than your strategy doc allows) Don’t force growth. Cultivate it. Don’t roll out values once a year. Water them weekly, in 1:1s, team meetings, Slack messages, and spontaneous stories. Don’t set culture on Monday and walk away. Show up Thursday with a trowel and ask, “What’s sprouting? What still needs care?” 🚜 What It Looks Like in Practice Want to build a more courageous, creative, or accountable team culture? Try this instead of a vision dump: 📌 Seed: Share your half-formed idea early. Invite a few trusted voices into the conversation. Ask: “How would this land with your team?” or “What would make this real for you?” 📌 Soil: Double down on trust. Don’t expect new behaviors in an environment that punishes mistakes. Culture only takes root where people feel safe enough to risk. 📌 Water: Celebrate tiny examples. Tell stories when someone lives the value out loud—even if it’s imperfect. These stories are the nutrients that feed new growth. 📌 Sunlight: Make the vision visible. Not as a slogan, but as a practice. Model it. Point to it. Align your decisions with it, even when it’s costly. 📌 Time: Resist the urge to declare something “didn’t work” just because it didn’t show fruit in a quarter. The best culture change happens underground first. *Root systems form long before the blossoms.* Consider this: -If you want a team to carry something, you need to let them co-create it. -Ownership begins at the root—not the launch party. -Don’t push. Cultivate. -Don’t announce. Plant. -Don’t expect fruit without first tending the soil. It’s slower. But it’s stronger. And the harvest? Worth every season it takes.

I was asked in an interview recently how do you build culture in an organization. My thoughts. 1. Align Culture with Organizational Strategy • Define the Desired Culture: Start by identifying the behaviors, mindsets, and attitudes that will support your organization’s strategic objectives. • Communicate the “Why”: Ensure employees understand how cultural values connect to the company’s purpose and success. Clear messaging from leadership about how behaviors tie to business outcomes is crucial. 2. Embed Values into Everyday Practices • Recruitment and Onboarding: Hire people whose values align with the organization’s. Reinforce cultural expectations from day one. • Performance Management: Build values into goal-setting, feedback, and evaluation processes. Recognize and reward employees who exemplify the desired culture. • Leadership Modeling: Leaders must embody the culture in their actions, decisions, and communication. Culture flows from the top down. 3. Build Systems that Reinforce Culture • Recognition Programs: Celebrate employees who demonstrate behaviors aligned with company values — not just top performers but also those who uphold integrity, innovation, or teamwork. • Training and Development: Provide learning opportunities that reinforce cultural values. For example, if adaptability is key, offer change management workshops. • Policies and Processes: Ensure HR practices (e.g., promotion, performance reviews, and rewards) reinforce the desired culture. 4. Empower Employees to Drive Culture • Culture Champions: Identify and empower employees across levels to model and promote cultural behaviors. • Employee-Led Initiatives: Create space for employees to suggest ideas that align with the organization’s values 5. Reinforce Culture Through Communication • Storytelling: Share real examples of employees living the culture in newsletters, meetings, or company-wide platforms. • Rituals and Routines: Develop meaningful traditions that reinforce values. 6. Measure and Evolve the Culture • Employee Feedback: Regularly gather input through engagement surveys, focus groups, or one-on-ones to assess cultural alignment. • Track Cultural Metrics: Use data like retention rates, (eNPS), and performance outcomes to measure cultural success. • Adapt as Needed: Culture isn’t static. Reassess as business strategies evolve to ensure alignment. Key Takeaway: An amazing culture is built when values are embedded into how the organization operates — from hiring to leadership behavior, performance management, and recognition. When culture directly supports strategy, it becomes a driving force for employee engagement, retention, and business success.