Culture is a growth strategy: 3 ways to strengthen yours

In this article, you will receive answers to these key questions leaders ask when they want growth and a better culture: 

• Can culture drive business growth?
• How do you grow without losing your culture?
• What are practical ways to strengthen company culture? 
• How does transparency impact performance?
• How does culture affect client relationships? 

Growth is easy. Growing without losing your culture isn’t.  

When I became CEO of lūquire at the end of 2021, our industry was on the cusp of a tidal wave of deals, mergers and rollups. In the years since, growth, at almost any cost, has often been the default story.  

When agency president Stephanie Spicer, chief creative officer Glen Hilzinger and I took the helm, we committed to a different approach. We committed to growing, and growing significantly, but not at the expense of who we were as a decades-old, people-first independent agency.  

Within two years, our 65-person indie was named one of ADWEEK’s 2024 Fastest Growing Agencies. Less than two years after that, we were recognized as one of Ad Age’s Best Places to Work.

Culture and growth do not have to be in tension. In our case, one drove the other.  

The growth that put us on the Fastest Growing list was largely organic. It did not come from a shopping spree of acquisitions. It came from existing clients choosing to do more with us.  

That is a culture story as much as it is a sales story.  

Clients do not expand scopes with partners they do not trust. Teams do not earn that trust if they are constantly turning over. People do not do their best work if they are afraid to take risks. And they do not stay if the culture does not match the rhetoric.  

Here are three things we did that any leadership team can adapt.

1. Turn transparency into a habit, not a headline 

We knew that if we wanted people to act like owners, we had to treat them like owners. So we got more deliberately transparent. 

On a regular cadence, we started sharing:

Transparency did three important things:  

1. It turned “the state of the business” from speculation into a shared source of truth.
2. It replaced anxiety with clarity: Here is where we are. Here is what we are trying to do. Here is your role.
3. It put leadership on the hook. When you say the goals out loud, you own them.

If that sounds intimidating, it should. But getting uncomfortable is necessary for growth. Here’s a starting point:

TO TRY: Pick one metric or goal your team is concerned about or speculating about. Share the real numbers, the context and what you are doing about it. Make sure the desired outcome is specific and measurable. Then commit to that level of candor as a rhythm, not a one-off announcement.  

2. Make values everyone’s job 

We actually don’t list “core values.” We live by shared accountabilities – so called because living them is everyone’s responsibility, including mine.  

They show up in everything from onboarding to quarterly meetings to performance reviews. Success is measured not only by what you achieve but also by how you achieve it.  

Are your company’s core values, in fact, shared accountabilities? Here is a simple litmus test you can use:  

TO TRY: Think of the last three hard decisions you made. Could an employee connect those decisions back to your stated values? If not, you may have an important opportunity to realign expectations, performance and messaging – top-down, sideways and bottom-up. 

3. Design your system so people can do their best work

We expect our team to use their creativity to solve real business problems for our clients. Campaigns that make noise are not enough; they need to move the needle.  

You cannot deliver that kind of work on culture fumes.

When people feel informed, trusted and supported, they do not just execute. They think. They challenge. They collaborate. They stay long enough to see strategies through and learn from the results.

This shows up in some key ways for us:

• A 96% employee retention rate, which means stable, senior teams who know our clients’ businesses deeply
• A remote-first model that widens our talent pool and brings in different markets and perspectives
• Employee Resource Groups, our internship and mentorship program and community partnerships that ensure more voices shape the work and how we show up
• Our lived ethos of Kindor®: a blend of kindness and candor. Kindness fuels creativity; candor sharpens it. Together, they create the conditions for each person to do their best work.

How people experience the company shows up in how clients experience the work.  

To pressure-test whether your system is helping or hurting your business, you can:  

TO TRY: Ask yourself the following: Are we rewarding activity or impact? Do our structures give people space to think, or only to react? Where are we optimizing for attention when we should be optimizing for intention? 

My father, Steve, who founded lūquire, has always said our people are what make us different. Forty-one years in, that is not just a sentiment; it is a strategy.