It’s a tale we’ve all heard before. A successful small business grows into a giant company and loses sight of the attitude and standards that made them great in the first place. So how do you take something good and spread it further, without messing it up?

That question was the catalyst for Robert Sutton’s new book, Scaling Up Excellence: Getting to More without Settling for Less. Along with his co-author and fellow Stanford University professor Huggy Rao, Sutton examined diverse case studies and interviewed hundreds of enterprise veterans to discover how companies can get bigger and better.

A big key they found was being vigilant about clearing out any negative behavior along the way, including laziness, selfishness, dishonesty, and fear. The following are four techniques Sutton and Rao recommend for keeping the positive and eliminating the rest:

1. Don’t let it fester

Sutton says that it’s scientifically proven that mean people’s impact is five-times stronger than those who are nice. The best bosses nip this kind of negativity in the bud by being quicker to give warnings. According to Sutton, those who lead in this manner also tend to be more well-liked by their staff.

2. Get rid of (or move) the bad

Most people don’t like talking about firing, but Sutton says it can be necessary when fighting unfavorable behavior. Another method is to consider whether the offending person is really a bad apple or is simply in the wrong job. Often transferring someone to a different team or role can cause them to behave better and contribute more positively.

3. Use the “cool kids”

Identify the most influential members of a group. Train them on what is considered negative behavior and ask them to model the opposite. Sutton says one executive had an issue with distracted smartphone use during meetings. He recruited two people to stop looking at their phones and to also pressure others to do the same. Now when meetings start, everyone powers off their device and puts it away.

4. Have a long term focus

According to Sutton, people tend to behave better if they view themselves from the future, looking backwards. As an organization scales, reminding employees that they are always striving towards something that is really great, versus just doing what is “good enough” now, helps excellence to spread.

Read all about tools for efficiency, unification, collaboration, accountability, and other must-have technologies for any small business by downloading this free e-book.