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How to Build a Strong Business Culture That Actually Works - Ep 26, Dave Coull CEO Stage Electrics Group
How do you build a strong company culture that actually works? Dave Coull explores trust, leadership, company values and maintaining culture as a business grows. Company culture is easy to talk about. Putting some values on the wall, adding them to the website and telling people what the business stands for is the simple part. The much harder challenge is making sure those values are reflected in how people actually behave, how leaders make decisions and what employees experience every day.
In this episode of The Business Takeaway, Dave Coull, CEO of Stage Electrics Group, joins Ben Payne to explore what it really takes to build and maintain a strong company culture.
Dave shares his experience of leading an established business through growth and change, including the challenge of bringing different teams together through acquisitions. They discuss why trust and transparency matter, how leaders influence workplace culture through their own behaviour and why listening to employees becomes increasingly important as an organisation grows.
The conversation also explores a problem many growing businesses eventually encounter: the culture that developed naturally when the company was smaller doesn't necessarily survive growth. More people, multiple locations, acquisitions and changing leadership structures can all affect how an organisation feels to the people working inside it.
For CEOs, founders, business owners and managers, this is a practical conversation about organisational culture without the slogans. It's about what leaders actually do to build trust, create employee engagement and make company values mean something.
In this episode, you'll discover:
- How to build a strong company culture through behaviour rather than words
- Why trust and transparency are fundamental to effective leadership
- How leaders influence workplace culture every day
- What happens to company culture as a business scales
- How acquisitions and organisational change affect established teams
- Why listening to employees matters
- How company values can influence real business decisions
The Business Takeaway
- Company culture isn't what you write on the wall. It's what your people experience when they come to work. As a business grows, maintaining that culture requires leaders to keep listening, communicating and demonstrating through their own behaviour what the organisation actually stands for.
Timestamps:
00:00 - Welcome and episode overview
02:16 - The core role of culture in organisational success
06:28 - Transitioning into the events and technology sector
09:22 - Building trust through humility and authenticity
12:44 - Leading technical teams without needing to be a technical expert
15:45 - Communicating effectively during COVID-19 and remote onboarding
19:43 - Protecting and evolving existing company culture during acquisitions
23:45 - Defining core values with employee input and ongoing reinforcement
28:58 - Handling cultural integration of new business units
32:04 - The impact of culture on employee engagement and productiveness
36:33 - The importance of continuous communication and transparency
39:39 - Maintaining culture across growing and distributed teams
44:11 - Managing high performers with misaligned values
48:41 - Major mistakes leaders make in shaping company culture
51:11 - Practical steps for honest and transparent leadership
55:20 - Creating an environment where challenging leadership is safe and encouraged
58:43 - Balancing honesty and confidentiality in leadership communication
62:24 - Building a legacy based on developing people and strong culture
65:49 - Final thoughts: leadership as a team enabler and culture creator
66:05 - Rapid-fire: Apple or Android?
66:17 - Preferred social media platform?
66:23 - City or beach getaway?
67:01 - Essential item for travel?
67:08 - Morning or night person?
67:30 - Build new or fix what's broken?
67:50 - Growth or profitability?
68:19 - Best advice ignored?
68:45 - The drink Dave would choose at a pub?
Resources & Links:
If you enjoyed this episode check out Matt Turners episode on our show
This episode offers actionable leadership principles rooted in decades of experience—timeless lessons for anyone committed to building thriving, resilient organisations.
