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The idea that sorting for cultural fit is a key component of hiring and retaining great employees and building strong companies has become widely accepted over the past decade or so. But now, some people are starting to push back. I read an article today in HBR by Ron Friedman, 5 Myths of Great Workplaces, (the article was a kind of trailer for his newly released book on that topic, which sounds pretty interesting), and one of the "myths" that he proposes to debunk is that great organizations "hire for cultural fit."
Since I happen to think that cultural fit is important, I read that part of Friedman's article with a lot of interest. As it turns out, I agreed with the core of what he was saying: he asserts that if all the people in an organization are very similar to one another - in personality, attitude, values, thinking style, background - it can lead to complacency, overconfidence, and a lack of creativity, and that it can become an excuse for hiring to fulfill existing prejudices. I think he's 100% right in that assertion (and he says he has data to back that up - which isn't a surprise to me.)
But that's not how I would define cultural fit.
And therein lies the problem. Because the phrase has become so popular, its definition has expanded until it's used to mean very many different things. (It's similar to when clients tell me that the main problem in their company is "communication" - I know we're going to have to unpack that word pretty extensively, because there are about twenty different organizational or managerial difficulties they could be putting under that heading.) And, as happens all too often when a phrase gets popular, some of the things "cultural fit" has lately come to mean are pretty unfortunate - as in Friedman's case; he's defining "cultural fit" as an unhealthy and exclusionary lack of diversity.
And I've observed this. Some executives I've dealt with over the past few years have used the phrase "not a cultural fit" in exactly this negative, let's-maintain-the-status-quo way; to mean "that person is too black/female/old/young/non-degreed/linear/non-linear"...in other words, "that person is not enough like me."
So, we can either decide to throw out the phrase altogether and start over, which seems both extreme and impossible, or we can come back to a more targeted and nuanced understanding of what "cultural fit" actually means, so that we can continue to use it as a valuable benchmark. Perhaps a good place to start would be with a clear definition of "culture." Here's the definition we use, and that I've written about before:
Corporate culture: Patterns of accepted behavior, and the beliefs and values that promote and reinforce them.
Let's assume, for the moment, that there actually may be something useful in hiring people who will thrive in our particular corporate culture. If so, then given the preceding definition, it seems to me that the most important place to look for that fit would be in people's core beliefs and values. For example, let's say I'm a CEO, and I deeply value both customer service and efficiency. I believe that my company will thrive if I can bring our product to market in the simplest, most cost-effective way while delighting our customers and giving them what they want and need. And let's say I've built a culture of people who share my values, and where their behaviors reflect those values and beliefs. Let's then say I hire someone who has skills I need, but to whom neither one of those things is important - who, let's say, values making the greatest possible amount of money, by any means, and doesn't really care about customer service or efficiency. That person, I propose to you, will not be happy in that environment, and no matter how intelligent or appropriately skilled, that difference in core values will make it difficult to impossible for him or her to succeed.
On the other hand, if I, as the CEO, hire someone who does value customer service and efficiency, but who is different from the "average" employee in a variety of other ways - is female in a largely male environment; or is a non-linear thinker where others are more logical - if I'm clear about what I mean by "cultural fit," and make sure that my employees are clear about what I mean by it, that employee will bring freshness and diversity to the conversation and the thinking while still being able to connect with the core values of the organization.
So: how about if we make sure that when we say "someone is a cultural fit," we mean "this person holds similar core values to the core values that are essential to who we are as an organization." That implies that we need to get clear about what those core values are, sort for them during our hiring process - and welcome all kinds of diversity beyond that core values match. We'll be able to build teams and organizations where employees find the work meaningful and engaging, while at the same time bringing all the uniqueness of who they are and how they think to that work. Then we'll have organizations that deliver on their values by leveraging people's differences, and cultural fit will be a useful standard for this century.
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