The look of surprise on the CEO’s face when he experienced the statistics first-hand was worthy of a picture. He was in complete shock. The numbers on the page were void of meaning compared to seeing them in reality — on the shop floor.

When he asked, “How many of you have been here more than 10 years?”, one hand went up. “Five to ten years?” — no one.

“Three or more?” Again, just one person’s went up. Actually he is celebrating his 20th anniversary this year. “Two years?” None.

“One year?” Two more hands went up. You could see him thinking to himself, “But there are more than three people here, there are 20 of us.” The rest had been working there less than a year.

Shocked, surprised and even confused, the CEO worked to regain his composure and adjust his message for the workshop he was leading on culture. Thank goodness, he recently had a hunch that the culture was getting cloudy and needed lots of attention. At least now he knows what was confusing the culture — they are all new.

This company is going through a rapid period of growth. Since 2012, their headcount has tripled to 10,000 employees plus and still growing rapidly. It is easy to read about the growth of the workforce in the reports, even to brag about it, but you need to pause and think about what this means in reality.

When you experience rapid growth your culture comes under attack.

Two out of every three employees — this is assuming no attrition, which we know happens — are new. New employees bring their old ways of working — outsider experiences — with them. On the surface it is good to bring in new ideas to “stir” things up.

But when two out of every three employees are new, it means new ways of doing everything. New policies and procedures are proposed. New structures introduced. More new people are recruited.

Everyone starts questioning, ‘Why do we do it this way?’. The organisational memory gets Alzheimer’s disease.

They don’t know the ways of the company, its culture, so they start making it up. They guess about what it should be given their past experiences. Why would you expect them to know your culture?

You want to argue that spending a day or so (maybe less) in an induction programme, they will know and understand the culture. Induction is like drinking from the fire hose where most of the water ends up wasted on the ground.

During induction, way too much information is being force fed without any time to digest it, especially the culture.

During the break, the CEO walked up to me with his eyes as huge as saucers asking, “What do I do? They’re all new!”

But you knew this, your opening slide talked about the growth in your headcount. That is when it really settled in, we need to know what the numbers mean … not just know the numbers.

This made me wonder, “What should companies do to prepare for (or manage) rapid growth?”

Of course, you could stop growing to mitigate culture drift, but that is a foolish remedy. You need to remember that every new person is new. They do not know the history of the company, may not be aware of what the culture really is. Spend time bringing the history, the real stories of your company, to life.

Never miss an opportunity to highlight your culture. Culture is what holds your company together. When it is strong it will bond your people and when it is weak or segregated, it is highly divisive.

Back to our case example, the CEO spent two hours sharing from his heart, telling stories of the history of the company. In essence he was explaining why he thinks the way he does and what is important to him.

At the end, he asked, “How was it?”

Incredible! We wish we could have known this earlier.

The writer is a leadership adviser and author of the ‘10 Tips for Leading in the Middle East’ and other writings. Follow him on Twitter: @tommyweir.