In recent conversations with several founders, a shared concern emerged: when a company is small, the team is vibrant and agile in responding to the market. But as the organization grows to hundreds of people, with systems and processes gradually perfected, the company’s “vitality” quietly slips away.

We seem trapped in a management paradox—the more we try to eliminate chaos, the more we feel our entrepreneurial spirit eroding.

This keeps me pondering: as creators and stewards of an enterprise, what exactly are we building? A perfect machine that runs on precise instructions, or an organic, self-sustaining entity capable of continuous growth?

Years of practice have taught me that the secret to corporate longevity lies not in the number of rules and regulations, but in whether we have cultivated fertile “organizational soil.”

This soil must be nurtured by the founder personally. It is invisible and intangible, yet it determines whether the organization can preserve its founding spirit.

When the soil is rich enough, even as the company scales, those precious entrepreneurial traits—proactive ownership, rapid experimentation, sustained innovation—will continue to grow naturally in every team member.

So, how do we cultivate this invaluable soil?

Psychological safety is the air in the soil.

Founders feel both deep affection and anxiety for their companies, but the key is to channel that anxiety into tolerance for failure. In terms of systems and culture, do we allow the team to experiment and make mistakes in pursuit of ambitious goals?

Google’s early “20% time” policy is a vivid example: employees could spend part of their work hours on exploratory projects they were passionate about. It was in this fertile soil of freedom that innovative products like Gmail and Google Maps were born. Psychological safety empowers teams to dare to try, dare to fail, and turns failure into nourishment for growth.

A sense of mission is the sunlight in the soil.

As companies grow, employees can easily get lost in trivial tasks. The founder’s responsibility is to act as the organization’s “North Star,” ensuring everyone understands the direction and meaning of their efforts. This light illuminates the path for autonomous action and helps the team maintain alignment and resilience in complex environments.

Resource support is the water in the soil.

Beyond funding and tools, the most critical resource is time. Are we willing, like Google or OpenAI, to institutionalize time for exploration and learning? Are we bold enough to invest in projects that may show no short-term returns but could determine the company’s future? Such investments are the most direct embodiment of a founder’s long-term philosophy and the source of an organization’s capacity for self-renewal.

To achieve this, founders must undergo a role transformation: from a hands-on “builder” to an ecosystem-nurturing “gardener.” A builder focuses on whether every detail is executed correctly, while a gardener focuses on whether the environment is conducive to growth, then patiently waits for life to find its own direction.

In practice, cultivating the soil is a systematic and ongoing effort.

First comes breaking the ice: the founder must take the lead in “showing vulnerability,” sharing lessons from failures, and telling the team that sincerity matters more than perfection.

Next is laying the foundation: using innovation funds, reforming evaluation mechanisms, and other means to embed values and a tolerance for failure into practice.

Finally, there is deep cultivation: like a gardener inspecting the soil, sensing the organizational climate, and preventing processes and bureaucratic rigidity from stifling innovation.

Large enterprises especially need to be cautious: the more processes there are, the more they should serve as enablers of efficiency, yet they can easily become shackles that suffocate innovation. Striking a balance between system discipline and organizational vitality is a long-term challenge every manager must face.

The rewards of cultivating the soil won’t show up in next quarter’s financial report, but it endows the company with the most valuable capability—self-renewal. The second curve that grows from within allows the organization to continuously evolve in a rapidly changing market.

Drucker once said that the essence of management is to inspire and release each person’s goodwill and potential. For founders, cultivating the soil is a calling that transcends management. It is not only the foundation of corporate longevity but also the most precious legacy we can leave to the organization.

When we bend down and patiently nurture this soil for growth, we may discover that the secret to corporate longevity has never been found in distant strategy documents, but in our daily commitment to trust, to giving space, and to patiently waiting for growth to take root.