You can walk into a facility and feel it right away. The energy. The pace. The way people communicate. Whether the team is working together or working around each other. In cannabis, that shows up in the output. In your yields, your consistency and how your team handles pressure.
A lot of companies talk about culture. What matters is what actually happens on the floor when things get hard. Culture is not what is written down. It is what gets repeated every day, often when no one is watching.
Here are five things we have learned about building a culture that shows up in execution.
1. Hire for alignment, not resumes
Experience matters, but alignment matters more. Over time, you see who fits and who does not. The people who succeed want to improve and make the team better. They care about the work and the people around them.
That mindset compounds. We have team members who started in one role and grew into more responsibility as we scaled. That does not happen without alignment. You can teach skills. It is much harder to teach how someone shows up every day.
When alignment is not there, it quickly shows up. Communication breaks down, accountability slips and small issues take longer to resolve. That slows execution across the operation.
2. Share knowledge across the team
Execution improves when people share what they know. If something can help the person next to you, share it.
When that happens, problems get solved faster and small issues do not grow into larger ones that impact the entire operation. People are not working in silos, and the operation becomes more consistent. Over time, it becomes the expectation that we help each other get better.
When teams do not operate that way, information gets held back, mistakes get repeated and inconsistency shows up in the product.
3. Keep standards simple
Culture breaks when it gets too complicated. One of our internal standards is simple. No drama.
That does not mean avoiding hard conversations. It means addressing them directly. Say what needs to be said. Work through it. Move forward.
When expectations are clear, people move faster and with more confidence. In a complex industry like cannabis, simple communication is an advantage.
When standards are unclear or overcomplicated, people hesitate. Decisions slow down, and issues that should be addressed early get pushed off until they are harder to fix.
4. Empower people within a system
People need structure, but they also need ownership. Systems and processes create consistency.
Within that structure, people need room to do their work and think for themselves. If someone sees a better way, we want to hear it. When everything runs through layers of approval, execution slows down. You start to see delays, missed handoffs and decisions that should have been made earlier.
When people feel trusted, they take ownership. They solve problems faster and push for improvement without being asked. That is when culture starts to show up in the results.
5. Focus on what you can control
This industry is volatile. Pricing changes. Markets shift. Regulations move. You cannot control most of that.
What you can control is how your team responds. In down markets, culture shows up fast. Pressure reveals habits. Teams either stay focused or start reacting.
The answer is not always a big strategic move. Often it is getting back to basics. Talk to your team. Focus on the next problem you can solve, then the next.
That discipline builds confidence. Over time, it builds resilience. Without that focus, teams can get distracted by things they cannot control, and execution suffers.
There is a direct connection between culture and output. If your team is not aligned, consistency suffers. If they do not take ownership, it shows in the product. You can walk into a facility and feel it right away. The energy, the pride and the attention to detail, or the absence of it.
Culture is not separate from operations. It shows up at work every day. It takes time to build and daily work to maintain, and it does not take much to lose.
In cannabis, where execution matters, culture is an edge. The companies that win are not the ones that talk about culture the most. They are the ones that live it every day in how their teams show up and execute. That is what holds up when things get hard.
Sarah Strickler is co-founder and chief community officer of Grown Rogue International Inc., a publicly traded, flower-focused cannabis company headquartered in Oregon. Since 2016, she has helped build and scale the company across multiple states with a focus on disciplined execution, strong teams and consistent product quality. She leads efforts around culture, team development, community integration and maintaining standards as the company grows.
