How to Grow Rapidly Without Diluting Company Culture Rapid growth and expansion can lead to a dilution of the foundational principles that defined your company in its early days. Jason English of Prommac discusses how you can retain your company's culture and vision while growing quickly.

Vital stats

• Player: Jason English
• Position: CEO
• Company: Prommac
• Associations: Young President's Organisation (YPO)
• Turnover: R300 million (R1 billion as a group)
• Visit: www.prommac.com
• About: Prommac is a construction services business specialising in commissioning, plant maintenance, plant shutdowns and capital projects. Jason English purchased the majority of the company late in 2012, and currently acts as its CEO. Under his leadership, the company has grown from a small business to an international operation.

Since Jason English purchased Prommac in 2012, the company has experienced phenomenal growth. At the time he took over as owner and CEO, it was a small operation that boasted a turnover below R50 million.

Today, Prommac is part of a diversified group of companies under the CG Holdings umbrella and alone has grown it's turnover nearly ten fold since Jason English took over. As a group, CG Holdings, of which Jason is a founder, is generating in excess of R1 billion. How has Prommac managed such phenomenal growth? According to Jason, it's all about company culture… and about protecting your glass of Oros.

"As your business grows, it suffers from something that I call the Oros Effect. Think of your small start-up as an undiluted glass of Oros. When you're leading a small company, it really is a product of you. You know everything about the business and you make every decision.

"The systems, the processes, the culture — these are all a product of your actions and beliefs. As you grow, though, things start to change. With every new person added to the mix, you dilute that glass of Oros.

"That's not to say that your employees are doing anything wrong, or that they are actively trying to damage the business, but the culture — which was once so clear — becomes hazy. The company loses that singular vision."

Protect and Nurture Your Culture

"As the owner, you're forced to share "your Oros' with an increasing number of people, and by pouring more and more of it into other glasses, it loses the distinctive flavour it once had. By the time you're at the head of a large international company, you can easily be left with a glass that contains more water than Oros.

"Protecting and nurturing a company's culture isn't easy, but it's worth the effort. Prommac has enjoyed excellent growth, and I ascribe a lot of that success to our company culture. Whenever we've spent real time and money on replenishing the Oros, we've seen the benefits of it directly afterwards.

"There have been times when we have made the tough decision to slow growth and focus on getting the culture right. Growth is great, of course, but it's hard to get the culture right when new people are joining the company all the time and you're scaling aggressively. So, we've slowed down at times, but we've almost always seen immediate benefits in terms of growth afterwards.

"We focus heavily on training that deals with things like the systems, processes and culture of the company. We've also created a culture and environment that you won't necessarily associate with engineering and heavy industries. In fact, it has more in common with a Silicon Valley company like Google than your traditional engineering firm.

"Acquisitions can be particularly tricky when it comes to culture and vision. As mentioned, CG Holdings has acquired several companies over the last few years, and when it comes to acquisition, managing the culture is far trickier than it is with normal hiring. When you hire a new employee, you can educate them in the ways and culture of the business.

"When you acquire an entire company, you import not only a large number of new people, but also an existing organisation with its own culture and vision. Because of this, we've created a centralised hub that manages all training and other company activities pertaining to culture. We don't allow the various companies to do their own thing. That helps to manage the culture as the company grows and expands, since it ensures that everyone's on the same page.

"Systems and processes need to make sense. One of the key reasons that drove us to create a central platform for training is the belief that systems and processes need to make sense to employees. Everyone should understand the benefits of using a system. If they don't understand a system or process, they will revert to what they did in the past, especially when you're talking about an acquired company.

"You should expect employees to make use of the proper systems and processes, but they need to be properly trained in them first. A lot of companies have great systems, but they aren't very good at actually implementing them, and the primary reason for this is a lack of training.

"Operations — getting the work done — is seen as the priority, and training is only done if and when a bit of extra time is available. We fell into that trap a year ago. We had enjoyed a lot of growth and momentum, so we didn't slow down. Eventually, we could see that this huge push, and the consequent lack of focus on the core values of the business, were affecting operations. So, we had to put the hammer down and refocus on systems, processes and culture. Today Prommac is back at the top of it's game having been awarded the prestigious Service Provider of the year for 2017 by Sasol for both their Secunda and Sasolburg chemical complexes."

Ask Your Clients

"If you want to know about the state of your company's culture, go outside the business. We realised that we needed to "pour more Oros into the company' by asking clients. We use customer surveys to track our own performance and to make sure that the company is in a healthy state. It's a great way to monitor your organisation, and there are trigger questions that can be asked, which will give you immediate insight into the state of the culture.

"It's important, of course, to ask your employees about the state of the business and its culture as well, but you should also ask your customers. Your clients will quickly pick up if something is wrong. The fact of the matter is, internal things like culture can have a dramatic effect on the level of service offered to customers. That's why it's so important to spend time on these internal things — they have a direct impact on every aspect of the business.

"Remember that clients understand the value of training. There is always a tension between training and operational requirements, but don't assume that your clients will automatically be annoyed because you're sending employees on training. Be open and honest, explain to a client that an employee who regularly services the company will be going on training. Ultimately, the client benefits if you spend time and money on an employee that they regularly deal with.

"For the most part, they will understand and respect your decision. At times, there will be push back, both from clients and from your own managers, but you need to be firm. In the long term, training is win-win for everyone involved. Also, you don't want a client to become overly dependent on a single employee from your company. What if that employee quits?

"Training offers a good opportunity to swop out employees, and to ensure that you have a group of individuals who can be assigned to a specific client. We rotate our people to make sure that no single person becomes a knowledge expert on a client's facility, so when we need to pull someone out of the system for training, it's not the end of the world.

"Managers will often be your biggest challenge when it comes to training. Early on, we hired a lot of young people we could train from scratch. As we grew and needed more expertise, we started hiring senior employees with experience. When it came to things like systems, processes and culture, we actually had far more issues with some of the senior people.

"Someone with significant experience approaches things with preconceived notions and beliefs, so it can be more difficult to get buy-in from them. Don't assume that training is only for entry-level employees. You need to focus on your senior people and make sure that they see the value of what you are doing. It doesn't matter how much Oros you add to the mix if managers keep diluting it."

Exponential growth

When Jason English purchased Prommac late in 2012, the company had a turnover of less than R50 million. This has grown nearly ten fold in just under five years. How? By focusing on people, culture and training.