You can’t build and maintain a great culture without the right people. Just as important as evaluating technical skills and work ethic, it’s essential to identify if a candidate "fits" with your culture. Every new hire will either strengthen or weaken your culture, and when you’re building a vision-based company, there’s no middle ground.
Hiring for fit means having a clear understanding of what your values mean to your organization. Once you have a clear line on that, you simply create selection criteria and processes that vet the job candidate’s cultural fit. We assess fit by:
- Including filtering questions and tasks in the application process.
- Screening for values alignment by phone before the interview.
- Asking questions related to behavior and attitude during interviews.
- Creating interactions with potential peers before making an offer.
In addition to seeking out cultural fit, you have to find people who get fired up about your organization’s vision. You don’t want to bring in someone who isn’t excited about "your company’s why."
Train to the Vision
Although hiring the right people is probably the biggest driver of success when building a vision-based company, there’s more to do after the hiring is done. Most organizations miss the chance to really ingrain their culture in the minds of their new hires by limiting "orientation" to filling out paperwork and explaining company policies.
Effective leaders are going to take the time to put a strong on-boarding process in place. A few well-told stories can go a long way toward helping new hires learn and support your company’s vision. Here are a few tips for on-boarding:
Connect them to teammates from various functions of your business. You want new hires to have multiple resources available to them as they learn the ropes.
Complacency is the enemy of vision, so on-boarding must be followed by reinforcement. As a baseline requirement, the purpose, values, and mission should be incorporated into one-on-ones with managers and into all meetings. I believe they need to be visible, which is why our employees have them at their desks and why we painted them on our walls. Your vision should be visible everywhere for easy reference and constant reinforcement.
And, don’t neglect to tie results--and rewards--directly to your vision by incorporating it into your formal review process. And, speaking of rewards, you must align all individual, team, and companywide rewards to your purpose, values, and mission. You want to consistently connect the dots between culture and results.
Fire to the Vision
Even the best hiring managers don’t get it right every time. Sometimes you end up with an employee who isn’t aligned with the vision. I’m not necessarily talking about poor performers, although a cultural misfit will likely also have a difficult time performing. I’m talking about people who are no longer connected to the purpose or whose behaviors have strayed from the core values.
The fastest way to destroy the health of your thriving culture is to ignore attitudes that aren’t aligned with your purpose and values. Employees that no longer support your culture cannot remain with the company.
It may seem excessive to let someone go because of a change in their attitudes and behaviors, especially if they are still able to produce exceptional results. After all, wouldn’t an employee who fit before still be a fit now? Not necessarily.
As an employer, you aren’t powerless against this change. Just as you have to feed a flame to keep it burning brightly, you have to regularly stoke your employees’ passion, their connection to the organization’s purpose, or it can fade away over time. And when that passion fades, you have big trouble. Employees who feel disconnected from the purpose can’t sustain a high level of engagement. They show up just to punch the clock.
