The Boardman International Blog shares insights from Boardman Members. In this post, Egbert Schram, Group CEO of The Culture Factor Group, writes about the board’s role in shaping company culture.

Most companies scale with capital or tech. But what if your most scalable asset was something less visible – your culture? I’ve seen firsthand how culture can be either your growth engine or your invisible ceiling.

Egbert Schram is the Group CEO of The Culture Factor Group and a Boardman Member.

Culture Isn’t Fluffy—It’s Structural

I’ve spent the last 20 years helping companies grow across continents – not just by shifting org charts or product lines, but by aligning their culture with their strategy. And here’s what I’ve learned: When culture is treated as a vibe or a poster on the wall, it becomes a liability. When it’s treated as a system, it becomes your most scalable asset.

Boards often ask: “How do we replicate success across markets?”
Rarely do they ask: “What invisible norms and behaviors are driving (or stalling) that success?”

You Can’t Scale What You Don’t Understand

We worked with a global company entering three new markets. They had a brilliant product and enough capital to flood the market, but things stalled. Why? Their internal culture favored consensus and stability – great for established markets, terrible for fast-paced experimentation.

No amount of strategy workshops could compensate for what their culture resisted. Once they saw that, they stopped asking “Why is expansion so hard?” and started asking, “What is our culture actually built to do?”

That question changed everything.

Boards and Owners: Culture Is Your Responsibility

Culture is too often delegated to HR or buried in employee surveys. But at its core, it’s a reflection of what leaders reward, tolerate, and ignore. Owners and boards set the tone – sometimes unconsciously.

When we benchmark culture, we look at one thing: does the current way of working enable or block strategic execution? That’s where the real leverage lies.

And frankly, that’s where boards should be looking too. Currently this is still voluntary, but already happening now (e.g. Australia, UK) is the movement of making boards legally liable for the culture of a company….

The Hidden Cost of Cultural Misalignment

I’ll be honest – we’ve also seen the other side. Teams that burn out because the pace demanded by strategy is emotionally unsustainable. Leaders who push transformation without realizing their culture has zero appetite for risk or ambiguity. Culture isn’t just about behavior. It’s about capacity.

When boards don’t understand this, they approve strategies that their organization simply can’t live up to – at least not for long.

What Boards Should Be Asking

If I could offer just a few questions to board members overseeing international growth, they’d be:

• Does our current culture enable the execution of our strategy?
• Are we scaling practices that align with our long-term ambition?
• What early warning signs tell us our culture is under strain?
• Do we understand the emotional cost of how we work?

Culture as a Competitive Advantage

The companies that succeed internationally aren’t just the ones with the most funding or tech. They’re the ones who know who they are – and who have built ways of working that match their ambition.

Culture isn’t soft. It’s repeatable. It’s scalable. And when it’s aligned, it’s your greatest asset.

About the author

Egbert Schram is the Group CEO of The Culture Factor Group and a Boardman Member. He works with leadership teams and boards to align strategy and culture in some of the world’s most iconic organizations.

Get to know Boardman Membership