Creating a strong company culture requires intentional design and consistent implementation according to leading founders and CEOs. Industry experts share practical strategies for establishing values, building aligned teams, and developing systems that reinforce cultural priorities. These insights offer actionable approaches to culture-building that can be implemented from day one through a company’s growth stages.
- Define Your Non-Negotiables and Live Them Daily
- Create Space for People to Own Their Work
- Prioritize Culture Setting Before Product Development
- Establish Clear Cultural Guardrails From Day One
- Culture Forms Through Small, Everyday Moments
- Begin With Small, Consistent Communication Practices
- Align Core Values With Your Founding Team
- Build Culture Through Questions and Active Listening
- Start With Clarity on Values and Expectations
- Wire Observable Behaviors Into Company Systems
- Keep People at the Center of Systems
- Translate Vision Into Practical People Strategy Early
- Build a Team That Shares Values and Principles
- Include Team Members in Defining Core Values
- Treat Culture Like a Product That Needs Iteration
- Research What Works Through Soft Launch Approach
- Recruit Leaders Who Embody Your Desired Culture
- Define Core Values Before Making First Hire
Define Your Non-Negotiables and Live Them Daily
When you are building something from nothing, culture is not a perk you add later, it’s the foundation you lay before anything else grows. My biggest advice to any founder is to define what you stand for early and live it out in action, not just in words. Culture is not the poster on the wall or the line in your company handbook. It’s the lived experience of how people show up, work together, and feel seen.
The first step is clarity. Get very honest about your non-negotiables as a leader. What do you want work to feel like for the people who join you? What will you protect, even when it’s hard or expensive? Write it down. Talk about it. Make decisions with it. At CultureShift HR, we started with a simple but powerful belief: people thrive where they feel trusted, respected, and safe to contribute their full selves. That belief guided every early choice, who we hired, how we communicated, even which clients we partnered with.
From there, embed it into the small, practical moments. Culture is built in meetings, in how you handle mistakes, in how you celebrate wins, and in how you give feedback. As a mostly remote company, we knew connection could not be left to chance. We created intentional rituals like weekly open forums where team members can speak up, share wins, and surface challenges. It keeps our values alive and visible, even when we are not in the same room.
If I could give one lesson, it’s this: your culture will form whether you shape it or not. Choose to shape it with intention from day one. Be clear about who you are and what you expect work to feel like, then let every decision such as hiring, communication, recognition, and technology reinforce that choice. A clear, values-led culture becomes a magnet for the right people and keeps your company anchored as it grows.
Create Space for People to Own Their Work
When I launched my software company, I made the classic mistake of trying to run my startup like Procter & Gamble, where I had trained, holding a 10-person team to enterprise-level standards. I micromanaged every deliverable, fixed every document, and unknowingly crushed creativity and morale.
After two years of watching energy decline and ideas dry up, I realized my approach was unsustainable. In one pivotal meeting, I made the leap to step back, providing only high-level strategic direction and trusting the team to figure out the “how.” It was terrifying, but transformative.
The shift unleashed creativity, ownership, and confidence across the team. Work quality actually improved without my constant oversight, and the same 10 people are still with me today — eight years later — building market-leading HR technology and AI products.
The biggest lesson? Founders need to let go. By creating space for your people to own their work, you unlock far more innovation, loyalty, and long-term success than you ever could by trying to control everything.
Prioritize Culture Setting Before Product Development
I strongly recommend the first step that founders should take is to clearly identify the culture they want to build before the product development process and/or team decides that for you. Culture setting is both a privilege and responsibility that great founders prioritize as much as, if not more than, their product development. They prefer to be proactive in what they wish to build rather than react to something that forms organically.
Many times founders, in their natural excitement, get going on building the product and/or service. While that enthusiasm can be infectious, time flies and before they know it, the culture of their company has formed organically. While this could be a good culture, there is an equal possibility that it is not the one a founder wishes to scale.
Therefore, early in the journey, it is important for the founder to think about these three questions at the beginning and circle back to them throughout the first couple of years:
Not just “what” am I building but also “how” do I want to build this company?
What actions do I need to take personally and consistently to set the foundations of my desired culture?
In order to achieve the “how,” what characteristics or attributes do I want to look for in my team?
Responsible founders who appreciate the privilege of their position think about culture setting consistently and implement it with strategic discipline.
Establish Clear Cultural Guardrails From Day One
The most important first step is getting crystal clear on your non-negotiables. Those are your cultural guardrails, and they’re what protect the soul of your business as you grow. Write them down early, not as vague values on a poster, but as clear, behavioral standards you expect in practice. Hire to them. Fire to them. And make sure they show up in everyday decisions, both big and small.
Scaling will test everything you believe about your company. There will be pressure to compromise for speed, for funding, for convenience. But the moment you start making decisions that go against your non-negotiables, you’re drifting, and you need to recalibrate fast. Culture isn’t a nice-to-have; it’s the operating system that makes growth sustainable. If you build with those guardrails in place from the very beginning, you create a foundation strong enough to hold the weight of scale without losing what makes your company worth building in the first place.
Culture Forms Through Small, Everyday Moments
Every start-up begins with a dream, an idea bold enough to convince a few people to take a risk. In those early days, priorities are clear: build a product that works, find the first few customers, raise enough money to keep going. Everything else feels secondary.
But while teams chase prototypes and pitch decks, something quieter is taking shape beneath the surface: culture. Not the kind that sits on posters, but the one that shows up in how people behave every day: how they respond to setbacks, how feedback is given, how success is shared, and how decisions are made when time and resources are short.
Culture isn’t an HR agenda. It’s the sum of those small, repeated choices that signal what truly matters.
In the beginning, those choices mirror the founders and the early team. Their behavior sets the emotional tone: how open they are to ideas, how they treat mistakes, and how they balance ambition with empathy. Over time, that tone becomes the company’s default setting.
Hiring plays a defining role here. Early hires don’t just bring capability; they hardwire norms. A few thoughtful hires who align with the organization’s way of working can amplify the culture. A few careless ones can distort it.
That’s why the first real step in building culture is not drafting values, it’s demonstrating the behaviors that matter. As the company scales, the dream evolves, markets shift, and new people join. What keeps the organization anchored isn’t the original idea alone, it’s the way people work together to pursue it.
Because in the end, culture isn’t built on off-sites or slogans.
It’s built in the everyday, in the thousand small moments when no one is watching.
Begin With Small, Consistent Communication Practices
The greatest company cultures begin with communication, not with benefits. When I started my company, we started each weekly call sharing small wins. It could be closing a deal or assisting with homework for kids. Those little moments of connection built relationships more quickly than any policy could.
That simple habit forged trust. Team members felt more comfortable to work alongside one another, and issues were addressed prior to their growth and explosion. Culture does not form in speeches or taglines. It begins in small, repeated behaviors that inform individuals that they belong. Get those correct, and the rest happens automatically.
Align Core Values With Your Founding Team
I started a global branding and digital marketing firm 24 years ago, and collaboration is key to our culture of engaging our team and ultimately our success. Whether you are B2B or B2C, every business is P2P, and connecting on a personal level is what matters most. I try to set the tone upfront with one rule: when in doubt, over-communicate. Especially at the beginning of the project, do not make assumptions about what people from different groups want or know; just ask or send an e-mail. It will save you a lot of time, money, and frustration down the road. Trust me. This comes from experience. Be a good listener and make sure you hear the others, their hopes, frustrations, and intentions. If the lines of communication are open and everyone makes an effort to listen and be heard, then collaboration will happen naturally and the information will flow.
To build a strong company culture, it is important to ensure alignment on core values with your team. When I interviewed people, I only considered those who shared my commitment to integrity, authenticity, passion, and drive. This value alignment creates the foundation upon which your entire company culture will be built and makes difficult decisions much clearer as you grow. Starting with the right people who embody your desired culture is far more effective than trying to retrofit values onto a larger organization later.
Build Culture Through Questions and Active Listening
Ask everyone about anything. And then keep quiet and process the information handed to you. Because you don’t impose culture — it’s something you build together through dialogue.
Asking your peers and employees any type of question will not only give you a whole new perspective on things (or even yourself!). It will also help you get to know the people around you and their specific strengths and personal challenges. Don’t just ask casual questions like how their day is going: For example, you may ask your most junior marketing employee what they think about your new campaign. You’ll get significant insights, both professionally and personally, although people will be reluctant to give their honest assessment at first. But each time you ask and truly listen to the replies, people will better understand your motives.
Admittedly, it is a challenging practice for everyone involved, but it’s the most reliable way to create a workplace where opinions are valued and heard and where asking questions and listening is standard practice. Soon, people will adapt and start asking their own questions.
At this point, you can move on to the harder questions for yourself as a founder: What do you expect from me? Where can I grow? Where do you think I’ve failed you?
Let me put it this way: You will always learn more from others than they learn from you. Asking questions is an incredibly powerful tool for achieving this.
Start With Clarity on Values and Expectations
Many focus on the environment (cool physical space) or the swag or events, but I recommend starting with clarity. What are your company values? What are your company objectives or goals for the year? What are the clear expectations for each position or role, along with how the position metrics impact the overall company goals? With this level of clarity — trust rises, business can move faster, and the culture will be strong. Everyone rows the boat in the same direction, understands their lane, and feels like they are making an impact, which is fulfilling.
Wire Observable Behaviors Into Company Systems
Founders should define culture as a set of observable behaviors, not a wallpaper of values. Start by creating a list of observable behaviors you expect from your employees. You can also add behaviors you won’t allow others to exhibit, to be more specific. Once you have formed this list, the most important step is to wire those behaviors into the systems that actually run the company. Make them part of hiring scorecards and interview questions, include them in onboarding checklists, and align recognition and performance reviews with those behaviors.
From there, establish simple rituals that help keep the culture alive. You can run something as simple as a weekly meeting where employees share one thing they did that was consistent with the culture of your company. Remember that culture can easily change; you maintain and grow it only if you intentionally make it part of how you get work done.
Keep People at the Center of Systems
You need to keep people at the center of the company and systems you’re building. If you build a company without thinking about how your employees will function, then your business will struggle if your people are struggling. So keep a people-centered mindset as your first step. Workplace wellbeing programs, flexibility…think about the policies that allow people to do their best work, show up as their best selves, and build that into your company culture from the onset. They will be the ones building up your company with you, so you want them to be their best.
Translate Vision Into Practical People Strategy Early
If a founder is intentional about building a solid company culture from the start, my key tip is to get support from someone who can translate your vision into a practical people strategy as early as possible.
This doesn’t have to be a full-time HR hire right away. But having a one-time or part-time advisor to help you answer some critical people and culture questions and define next steps can make a huge difference.
Ideally, this person would help you define company vision, core values, strategic goals, the role of company culture in achieving these goals, leadership style, preferred ways of working, and cultural non-negotiables.
Then, they would embed this into your hiring and onboarding strategy from the start, ensuring a strong foundation for an intentional company culture. Founders who do this can proactively build their culture instead of waiting to see the one that develops by accident.
Build a Team That Shares Values and Principles
The journey to establishing a strong company culture begins with a clear understanding of what that culture should embody. What are your objectives, and how do you plan to achieve them? What attributes do you seek in your team members? Our hiring process is centered on identifying individuals who resonate with our company culture. Key character traits such as a strong work ethic, respect, effective communication skills, leadership, innovation, and capability are non-negotiable. I’ve discovered that a team that shares the same principles and values is the bedrock of success. We reinforce this foundation by emphasizing open communication, transparency, and collaboration. That paves the way to evaluating various methods to achieve our goals and then developing the necessary steps to accomplish them.
Our core values include advocating for our clients to ensure they have the best possible experience. We take thoroughness to a new level with our attention to detail, and maintain integrity in everything we do for our customers and the company. Our focus is on maintaining a small business feel, regardless of our growth. We invest in self-improvement by utilizing training, TED talks, books, webinars, and continuing education. We remain passionate about the synergy within our team. We are a family, and we believe that having fun is a necessary component of being a team member.
Include Team Members in Defining Core Values
To intentionally build a strong company culture from the ground up, start by clearly defining your organization’s mission, vision, and values. This foundational step is critical and shouldn’t be limited to senior leadership decisions. Bring together team members from various levels to help define and shape these values collectively.
Once established, these core principles become the foundation for effective communication throughout your organization. Regularly reinforce these values during town halls and business meetings. They should drive your ongoing communication strategy and will naturally integrate into teams, initiatives, and programs over time.
When team members at all levels participate in creating these cultural pillars, they develop a deeper sense of ownership and alignment with the company’s direction. This inclusive approach ensures your culture isn’t just words on a wall but becomes embedded in how your organization functions daily.
Treat Culture Like a Product That Needs Iteration
Treat your culture like a product and your employees like customers. Start with principles and values, and make them real by outlining the behaviors you expect to see in practice. Then, keep iterating — culture isn’t static, it needs testing, feedback, and adjustment over time to stay strong and aligned.
Research What Works Through Soft Launch Approach
Think of it as a product-market fit exercise: do your research, experiment, and see what sticks. Get insights from marketing and HR. Ask your team, look at what conversations they’re having in Slack. Ask for their opinion on big business questions you’re trying to answer or an article you read. Then try a few things and see what they respond positively to. Just don’t make a big thing about it. For culture-building stuff to work, it needs to feel organic. Think soft launch, not GTM.
One thing you definitely shouldn’t do: anything you’ve thought of. What makes founders great at building from 0 to 1 are the exact traits that make most of them terrible at growing companies, and that includes culture. Trust me: ignore your own ideas or run them by people who are NOT your friends and are NOT founders. Ask a teenager instead. Your ideas, I’m sorry to say, are probably terrible and will actually thwart your culture-building aspirations.
Remember: being a great leader has almost nothing to do with having a wide variety of skills and everything to do with your ability to hire top talent, inspire the team to be productive, and create spaces for them to interact, play, and thrive.
Recruit Leaders Who Embody Your Desired Culture
Define what you want that culture to be, how it will emerge and develop, and what the cornerstones of the culture you’re trying to build are. Think in physical, emotional, and communication terms, both internally and externally. Then ensure you attract and recruit the right senior team to help implement the culture. They must live, breathe, and 100% understand it; otherwise, it’ll fail.
Define Core Values Before Making First Hire
The most important first step is to define and live your core values early before you hire your first employees. It is not just a buzz word! A founder should take time to clarify what behaviors, attitudes, and principles will shape how the company works day-to-day. And no, printing words on a wall is not going to do it. These values need to be practical, observable behaviors that guide decisions (how you hire, how you reward people, how you handle mistakes, etc).
By modeling those values consistently yourself, you set the cultural tone from the very beginning. Every hire after that becomes an amplifier of what you’ve already established. If you don’t define culture intentionally, it will form unintentionally, often in ways that are harder to correct later.
Define your core values, make them actionable, and commit to leading by example and exhibiting the behaviors you wish to see demonstrated in your team.
