Reflections after 20 years: How excellence survives growth

 

Twenty years ago this month, after getting an ABN, buying a laptop and printing out letterhead, envelopes and business cards, Nature commenced trading in the 2nd bedroom of my ADSL-less Richmond flat.

 

It certainly wasn't started with the intention of becoming the 80-person agency it is today. At the time I was simply wanting to do great work for clients without letting bureaucracy and unnecessary process get in the way. It only grew because we did great work, delivered great service, treated each client like they were our only one, and were really bad at saying no to work.

 

Recently, I was talking with the leadership coach Simon Dowling, who has facilitated a number of workshops for us over the years. Simon and I found ourselves exploring a question that every growing business eventually confronts:

 

As you grow, how do you continue to deliver excellence and genuinely stand for quality?

 

In the beginning, quality is largely a function of the founder and then a handful of talented people. Hire exceptional people, do exceptional work, don't make mistakes, and the business earns its reputation.

 

But somewhere between five and ten people, or ten and twenty people, something changes. You begin to realise that expertise is no longer enough. Hiring well becomes a hygiene factor. If excellence is going to survive growth, it has to become cultural rather than individual.

 

I recall a pivotal offsite workshop we held in around 2017, when as a business of 20 we realised half of the company had been on board less than a year, many less than 6 months. At this kind of moment, if one isn't careful, the forces that bind can become weaker than those that separate, so it was important to create team-owned, shared understanding and collective ownership of who we are, what we stand for, the quality standards to which we hold ourselves, and what we ask of each other. I want to thank colleagues like Thalia Morelle, Amber Pope and Femi Hardwick-Slack for drawing to my attention at that time the fact they sensed a cultural challenge brewing, giving me the chance to address it and make us stronger, starting with a superb workshop in which the entire team became the architects of standards.

 

When people own standards and quality, excellence stops being something imposed by leadership and starts becoming part of the fabric of the organisation. The team looks out for when we are and aren't doing our best, which is incredibly powerful.

 

I've learned that the type of conversation we had in 2017 matters most during periods of change. Rapid growth. Bringing in new capabilities. Structural shifts in ways of working like COVID and lockdown. Moments where the ties that tear apart are at natural risk of out-muscling those that bring together.

 

Ironically, those are precisely the times to give people even more ownership over culture, not less, and to be the drivers in creating clarity, shared understanding, and cohesion.

 

For me, one of the greatest joys of the past twenty years hasn't been the growth of the business itself. It's been watching a culture emerge that is open, flat, generous and full of people who genuinely believe they have both the freedom and the responsibility to shape where we're heading.

 

Twenty years on, I'm incredibly grateful to everyone in Nature's ecosystem who has supported us, backed us, and treated this business like their own.

 

There are too many to thank individually for our journey, but you'll know if you're one of these people: any client, but particularly those who backed us in when we were not the obvious choice, not the biggest, nor the best known. Yvette Gerges, Ruth Groom, Nic Mesic, and Stacie Haber, you're four of these; as was the late and sorely missed Nick Hickford.

 

Secondly, my entire team, and in particular any past or present colleague who's proactively brought an issue or thought to my attention that gave us a chance of being better and stronger as a result. And to my Partners, I can't thank you enough for making this business as successful as it has been.

 

 

And no, this wasn't written by AI.