Cultivating a Culture of Growth

Let’s admit the obvious: growth is not only good for business; it’s downright essential for sustained innovation and success. Everyone wants a culture of growth to navigate and thrive in our more competitive and disruptive world, whether it’s the ever-quickening change of technology or the tragedy resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. Talking about a culture of growth is one thing. Building a culture of growth, however, is something else entirely.

Performance, while important, is not the priority here. That alone can only take any business so far. High performing employees want to be appreciated, challenged, fairly compensated and offered developmental opportunities, according to a 2018 article in Forbes. A culture of growth depends upon leaders who embrace new beliefs and ideas and are comfortable with taking risks, which ensures the type of workplace where talented employees will stay and grow, not leave.

In fact, building a culture of growth encompasses people and the development of their skills. A growth culture relies on a mindset that encourages people to identify and address blind spots, insecurities and shortcomings — all for the good of the team. In this culture, defending personal worth becomes less important when compared to overall collective value. Employee talent and capability are viewed in the context of their contributions to the team and business, recognizing their capabilities and opportunities for improvement and advancement.

Focusing on the learning process is essential if leaders in any business hope to sustain a growth culture. According to the Harvard Business Review, the journey becomes the emphasis — not the destination — and to ensure safe travel and overall success, leaders must cultivate a safe space, a workplace environment where individuals are encouraged to offer new and bold ideas in a collaborative setting without fear of recrimination, retaliation or ridicule.

The point is to foster better thinking and creativity, where inquisitiveness, support and transparency trump dogma, ego and orthodoxy.

A culture of growth should inspire conviction, which often leads to ideas and proposals that may challenge the status quo. In the nurturing workplace, that kind of thinking helps organizations. Take my field, healthcare, where the market shift from the traditional fee for service care to high-value population health management prompted successful healthcare systems to either adapt or risk falling behind in an increasingly competitive marketplace.

The transition, a major change in the way we practice medicine, has frightened even the most successful healthcare operations. However, those healthcare firms that have established cultures of growth appreciate the rewards of innovation which creates new opportunities to address ongoing problems and enhances the firm’s ability to recruit and the best talent and maintain long-term stability and financial strength.

Unlike performance-driven cultures governed by a zero-sum game mentality that emphasizes the need to either win or lose, growth cultures allow employees to experiment and make mistakes as part of a path toward overall success. In truth, making mistakes is key to business growth. Failure should be an opportunity to learn in a tangible way. A well-developed growth culture fosters a nurturing environment that allows all employees to flourish in a way that drives performance.

The growth culture is also responsible for disruption in forward-thinking organizations. As companies, including health systems, become more successful in delivering high quality, high volume traditional healthcare, they risk falling behind in more meaningful growth. In healthcare, a growth mindset demands adopting the shift from fee-for-service care to high value population health management. This transition can frighten successful healthcare systems, but it shouldn’t.

The growth mindset rewards innovation in terms of recruitment and retention of the best talent, sustained long-term stability, financial strength, and a long-term platform for continued success.  

Building a culture of growth isn’t easy. Businesses wanting to create that type of workplace must have leadership that is willing to go the extra mile to ensure that they are providing sufficient respect and reinforcement to their employees as they push for change and innovation.

The long-term goal is to create a working environment that extends beyond simply meeting numbers over appreciating talented employees. A growth culture puts employee development and happiness first. They are the best assets and the best hope for any business to experience growth.