Case study · Scaleup / Tech
Culture architecture for a Swiss scaleup
A Swiss tech scaleup had grown from around 60 to nearly 180 people in two years. Product and market were right. Collaboration started to grind: founders became the bottleneck, mid-management was stretched, lived culture fragmented into silos.
- Duration
- 12 months
- Architecture fields
- CultureLeadershipFuture
- Industrie
- Tech · scaleup · 60 → 180 employees in 24 months
01
Starting point
The early culture — direct, fast, everyone close to the work — no longer carried at this size. Instead of consciously evolving it, it was invoked. New leaders had no frame. Decisions drifted back to the founders. First key people started to leave.
- 01Founders still made most strategic and operational decisions.
- 02New team leads were strong on craft but had no shared leadership understanding.
- 03Culture values were on the wall but shaped daily work less and less.
- 04Onboarding produced disappointment — expectation and reality diverged.
02
Intervention
We built a culture architecture with founders and extended leadership that fits the real growth stage — not a values poster, but a system that carries.
- 01
Phase 1
Culture diagnosis
What really carries in this house? What used to be culture but is now friction? Explored with founders, team leads and staff across all units.
- 02
Phase 2
Leadership clarity
New role profiles for founders, C-level and team leads. Clarity on which decisions are consciously delegated — and what founders consciously stop deciding.
- 03
Phase 3
Culture as architecture
A few binding principles for decisions, conflict, feedback and handovers. Not as a wall poster, but as practised routines in daily work.
- 04
Phase 4
Scalable rituals
Onboarding, 1:1s, retros and strategic cycles built to grow with the next growth step.
03
Impact
A year on, founders were out of the operational core. Team leads led with a shared understanding. Culture wasn't invoked anymore — it was experienced again.
≈ 70%
operational decisions at team-lead level
180 people
onboarded into a shared leadership understanding
0
unwanted C-level departures over 12 months
«We thought we needed more processes. In truth we needed a culture that fits our size — and leadership that doesn't constantly fall back onto us as founders.»
Note — Anonymised. Figures are internal approximations from HR and leadership reviews.
Clarity begins in conversation
A similar question
in your own house?
First conversation: shared clarification, no sales. No pitch. An honest map.