Culture Matters: Business Is Social
photo by jronaldlee
Company culture matters to your business. That’s not a terribly bold statement. But why?
Culture matters because business is social.
These days most of us work interdependently. Your success is likely predicated upon exchanging ideas with your peers and receiving intellectual inputs from several different departments. True individual contributors are few and far between in a knowledge-based organization.
A crude example is the evolution from waterfall to agile technology development. Ideas and new products are created in highly interconnected and iterative processes rather than via assembly lines. Which gets us back to culture.
We need to know how to exchange information with one another.
Culture sets those norms. It establishes how we interact, how we make decisions and what’s deemed worthy of reward.
When employees’ value systems are aligned then so too is the company culture. It becomes a self-reinforcing cycle because everyone interacts and rewards according to their own value system (no matter what the annual performance evaluation sheet says).
A well-aligned culture allows people to communicate freely because the norms are well understood. The ground rules are implicitly agreed upon by everyone who has elected to work there and they are reinforced with every interaction.
When values systems are out of line, cultures ‘go bad.’ Rewards seem arbitrary, nascent ideas are used against their authors or credit is co-opted.
Culture fosters trust (even in cultures that are aggressive and competitive). In a game of repeated interactions it doesn’t take too many bad experiences to not want to work with a peer again. Or to withhold your best when dealing with them. Self-preservation will almost always win out over doing what is best for the business.
The better we all communicate the greater the likelihood of achieving success. And since we’ve already optimized processes, slashed workforces and off-shored as much as we can there aren’t too many places left to squeeze out more profits. Optimizing communication and aligning culture isn’t easy, but it’s the next frontier in driving business success.
Self-Perception vs. Reality
photo by Victoria Peckham
Another hidden gem from Sheena Iyengar’s The Art of Choosing. Dr. Iyengar had several hundred Columbia Business School students get 360-degree feedback from past managers, colleagues and subordinates.
The lesson? You’re not as great as you think you are so get over yourself.
Turns out that 90% saw “…significant discrepancies between how they saw themselves and how others interpreted their actions. Many who thought they were popular and valuable team players learned that they were seen as average and difficult to work with.”
90%.
Unfortunately for that group, others’ perception is reality.
Even worse news is that Dr. Iyengar references a study by Daniel Ames that reported that “…in the workplace, people who attempted to overtly enhance their position and reputation were seen as disruptive to the group and ultimately performed poorly.”
This speaks to the importance of being able to have those immensely difficult conversations about who we fundamentally are (or perceived to be) as people and how we behave in the workplace.
The more you have in common with others in terms of values and personality the easier these conversations are and the better you understand and appropriately interpret the actions of your colleagues. This gets to the heart of what we’re measuring at RoundPegg and why we so vehemently believe that hiring for fit needs some objectivity and rigor.
And while we may not have the exact answer, we believe we’re taking a big step toward the solution with our internal Touchy Feely meetings. It’s damn hard to discuss our perceptions that rub or (possibly harder) to be on the receiving end of that feedback. But it’s what makes a group and company run more efficiently and effectively. When we can get out of one another’s way we’re better able to put the business first.
We can all improve and we will be far more successful if we’re able to listen to others’ perceptions and internalize that.
Everyone and every company is a work in progress, to be sure, but nothing worthwhile is easy.
Kaizen.
Arranged Marriages and Hiring
On the night-stand this week is Sheena Iyengar’s recent book called The Art of Choosing. Like many books in the pop-science vein, there are plenty of studies that are interestingly counter-intuitive.
One study in particular jumped out. Drs. Gupta and Singh of the University of Rajasthan studied the consequences of arranged marriages and marriages by choice. The results?
Couples who had been together for less than one year and had ‘married for love’ (i.e. chosen their partners) scored a 70 of 91 on the Rubin Love Scale. After ten years, they totaled 40 of 91.
The arranged marriages, as you can imagine, didn’t start so hot and heavy. First year couples tallied 58 points, but that grew to 68 after ten years.
The conclusion Iyengar (and the study’s authors) draws is that, “In an arranged marriage, two people are brought together based on shared values and goals, with the assumption that they will grow to like each other over time, much in the same way that a bond develops between roommates, business partners or close friends.”
The marriage metaphor is often used to describe hiring or accepting a job in the professional ranks. Both sides spend a little time doing a mating dance, putting their best foot forward and trying to hide their craziness and then make a decision that will – they hope – last a long time.
The process itself is a bit of a hybrid between choice and being arranged, particularly if an outside recruiter is used (though their incentives for a happy match aren’t anywhere near as strong as two parents’). But far too often we are making hiring decisions “for love” (i.e. we fall in love with the resume and the skills and accomplishments the candidate brings). Ultimately, we are so overwhelmed by their stunning ‘good looks’ on paper that we overlook the fact that our values and goals are not well aligned. As is typical the relationship starts well. But over time, their differences are exposed which is why nearly half of all hires ‘fail’ within the first 18-months.
While everyone tries to get to the heart of a candidate’s values and personality, it ultimately devolves into a like-ability screen. Can you imagine eating lunch or going for drinks after work with the candidate? If so that’s great, but it makes for a good friend, not necessarily a great employee.
At RoundPegg, we encourage you to look beyond that attractive resume. Just as the parents who select their children’s mate won’t pick someone repulsively unattractive, you’re not going to hire an idiot. Odds are good that the person who has adequate skills but embodies the best of your culture will ultimately prove to be the far more successful partner. Sometimes it just takes a little objectivity to see that.
Discovering Culture + Values
photo by: didbygraham
We recently uncovered an article on The Ladders about questions to ask to discover the culture of your prospective employer. As they say, “company culture is everything. You can’t work where you don’t fit.”
Bravo.
Their questions are great for a prospective job seeker, but we want to offer up a few points on how to view this from the company’s point of view. After all, culture is a two-way street.
Culture ultimately comes down to what is valued. From a company’s point of view what is valued is what gets rewarded (not always, but it should be).
Every new person who walks through your doors will change the culture. If it’s a new CEO, she’ll change it a lot. If it’s a new marketing assistant then the sphere of influence will be much more limited.
So how do you identify what a prospective new hire values?
- Ask about mentors. Have them describe a person they look to for mentorship (even informally). What is it about the person they admire and try to emulate? Get the candidate to list the six or seven attributes that person has that are worth emulating.
- Rate themselves against their mentor. Then ask the candidate to rate themselves against their mentor on those six or seven attributes.
- Utilize the resume. Believe it or not, resumes can be used for things other than skills and accomplishments. Look for patterns in their work. Did they constantly create something new, did they improve existing processes or do they talk about how they got more out of a team?
- Ask them to talk through their obituary. Okay, maybe morbid (try retirement announcement if that’s less so) and maybe a little out of left field. But the idea is to get them to think about the things of which they are most proud. These will announce their values loud and clear.
- Where and when were they most successful? At which job were they most successful? Ask them to describe the environment. What contributed to their success? What were the people like around them? What were their best traits?
At RoundPegg we’re objectively quantifying culture to provide a rigorous data point which you can use in the interview. Please contact us if you’d like to find out more about using it in your interviewing process – info [at] roundpegg [dot] com.
What other techniques have worked well to identify what an individual values in the past?
Chemistry Matters
photo by sflovestory
We’ve written a lot about why we think chemistry matters. RoundPegg, after all, is all about finding people who will fit on your team without creating a cloud of chaos around them. The better people fit into the team, the more energy they can spend driving the team forward instead of playing politics.
Kevin Millar, former Boston Red Sox, was recently signed by the Chicago Cubs. While he plays a position at which the Cubs need a backup, the odds of him making the big league team are incredibly slim. He’s fourth on the depth chart where only two will play with the big club. Plus, he’s advancing in his career and hasn’t hit much in the past few years. He was signed strictly to set the team’s mood in the clubhouse over the six-week stretch of spring training.
Millar’s take: chemistry matters.
“People ask me all the time, ‘Is team chemistry overrated?’ Well, you tell me. You’re with 25 guys more than your family from basically end of February to October. That’s not overrated. You try to bring a team and a group together. When you get everyone pulling on the same rope, it’s exciting.”
Last year, the Cubbies signed notorious clubhouse cancer Milton Bradley and paid the price. He’s the epitome of how companies often hire. An ‘A’ player by all statistical measurements, but little mind was paid to whether he’d fit in with the rest of the guys in the clubhouse. While impossible to attribute Bradley’s antics to the Cubs 14-game decline from 2007 to 2008, it’s obvious the front office has gotten the message and is determined not to repeat that mistake. Clearly, they lay some of the blame on a chemistry experiment gone bad.
Baseball is a unique sport where every play is a series of one on one battles. Between the lines, I’d go so far to argue that chemistry matters less in baseball than in other sports. Or your company. But as Millar points out, you live with these guys. If you don’t like being around them it’s going to be harder to bring your best every day.
The Cubs are willing to spend potentially up to a million dollars to set the right mood in the clubhouse. Meanwhile, your company is probably more dependent upon teamwork than any baseball team. How much time, effort and money are spent aligning your culture, your team and getting the most out of your employees?
