Have you ever been told that you’re not a cultural fit?
Have you ever heard of somebody being told, or have you ever heard of a hiring manager or a recruiter saying, “I don’t think that they’re a cultural fit” or, “I don’t think they’re a fit for our culture”?
I’ve got a big problem with that. Are they not a fit for your shit culture? Is that what you’re saying? They are different, and they’re not a fit because your culture is shit and you want to keep it that way?
The fact is because they are different is a reason why you want to bring them into the team!
Diversity creates innovation.
Diversity creates adaptability.
Diversity is bloody good for everybody!
So you actually want to go out and bring people in who are different. You want to build your teams full of people who are different. And it’s not just about skin colour, or religion, or country of origin. It’s also diversity in thinking, in diversity in their opinions, diversity in their life experience, diversity in their qualifications, diversity in parts of the world that they’ve grown up in. There is diversity in the schools they’ve gone to, diversity in the in their education.
There are so many, so many things that involve diversity, or that are included that brings such great value to your team.
So just because you see someone is not a cultural fit, that is not an excuse to say no. If they are the right person for the job, for all other reasons, actually that not being a cultural fit is a strength for them, because they are going to bring diversity to your team.
Something new.
Something good.
And it is going to make your team better.
Have you ever heard of, somebody not getting a job, or somebody being ruled out of a job because they were different? They did not fit the culture of our team? I know I definitely have, and I will never say that when I’m hiring.
Please, if you like this message, please click on the link to the video at the top of this post and ‘like’ it, leave some comments below of your experiences.
Forget Best Practice – Aim for Best Fit
Nothing is surer to get heads nodding in a meeting than suggesting that we should be out to achieve best practice. Perhaps we’re even out to set best practice. I’ve been guilty of it myself.
But what actually does ‘best practice’ mean, and why am I against it?
According to Merriam-Webster online dictionary, ‘best practice’ is “a procedure that has been shown by research and experience to produce optimal results and that is established or proposed as a standard suitable for widespread adoption”.
Optimal results for who?
No two people are the same. No two organisations are the same. This makes applying best practice across two people hard enough, let alone two or more teams, departments, or organisations.
It’s aspirational at best. What is best practice for one organisation is not best practice for another. All organisations have different organisational architecture, strategies, technology, premises, plant, equipment, technology, stakeholders, culture, personnel….
There is no cookie cutter approach to best practice.
Enter, “best fit’.
Best fit involves understanding an organisation’s context, including its external environment and internal organisation. We must understand its purpose and objectives, its history, its cultural DNA. We must be able to identify and detail its core competencies and unique value proposition. We must also understand its risk appetite (positive & negative).
Once we know all of this, we can then work on identifying and implementing a prioritised solution that is the ‘best fit’ for the particular organisation, team or individual, that will get them from where they are now to where they need to be. For some it might be a very lean and agile solution, while for others it much be very rigid and structured.