What’s Culture Fitment?
All that time and money invested in upskilling could go washed down the drain if you don’t take a moment to ponder over culture fitment and not too many online courses cover this topic either.
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I’m sure most of us have faced many interviews all throughout our careers. Back in the late 90s & the early / mid 2,000s when we were hunting for entry roles in TECH we usually faced what was like 3-4 rounds when in some places they went as elaborate as 7-8 rounds as well.
Considering each of those rounds of interviews, even the ones of us with the faintest of memories would agree that they weren’t in any way to be deemed incrementally tough from the 1st to the last, akin to the games that keep getting tougher as one keeps clearing those initial levels.
That being the case, what was the basic purpose for it and why were so many rounds in an interview justified in the first place?
When there is no real concise answer befitting here, one specific explanation was the way a person being hired was being assessed for fitment over all the teams he was deemed to interface with over the regular course of his job.
But again, on a broader sense what does fitment really mean?
Matrices of various kind (like the one shown here above) have been regularly employed to identify fitment. Its simple to work with.
place candidates in the quadrant as deemed relevant post assessment
move them suitably based on the inputs over each round of interview, recruiter interface as they happen
(or)
use an aggregation of scores from each rounds to determine final fitment
A maximum score on the High Performance & Strong Fit quadrant would mean culture fitment stands proven.
But, one aspect that remains largely unrealized & more relevant to today’s times as well is how & why few organizations ignore this aspect totally and also how the importance / impact of culture fails to strike most candidates during the interview process as well.
The Problem(s)
So, why do people representing either side of the interview process seem to overlook culture?
And, more importantly what is it that most of them seem to pay an undulated amount of heed to?
Here are a couple of PIEs representing a few parameters that are considered important & that do matter to both parties (interviewers & candidates) over an average given interview:
Not so strangely, culture seems totally absent from either of those charts there which is to signify that neither the interviewers nor the candidates are really too very worried about the cultural aspect.
But that said and done, there could still be a few sects of people who do take culture seriously factoring it in to their decision-making process, though that percentage may be negligible based on the data aggregated across the world.
Why is cultural fitment important?
Before we jump in to directly answer this question, let’s zoom-out from the interview scenario and break into a short story.
Written a long time ago by the great Nobel laurate Rabindranath Tagore entitled “A wrong man in a worker’s paradise” it narrated a story of how a man who is used to being served on hand and foot and obviously lazy to the bone, accidentally / by mistake gets an entry into a place that’s not meant for him as everything / every event / every daily ritual seems to perfectly function on time to maintain what could be termed pin-point accuracy.
And then thanks to the new entrant, the entire place gradually goes into a retrograde changing things on its head leading to mounting chaos & reaching a stage where it’s whole identity gets overwritten as nobody believes in hard work / keeping up to a timing anymore, which obviously perturbs the administrators deeply, leading to a decision to oust “the odd man”.
But damage is done already as many people who were known to be working hard, now seem to believe in a laid-back way of life and some even go to the extent of expressing a wish to leave along with the laggard who is ousted.
In a similar vein, it is important to assess any new entrant on the lines of cultural fitment sans which one is lining oneself up for disastrous & irreversible damage which could lead to problems that run really deep.
Problem drilldown!
Do everyone in the organization know / correlate to / resonate with the culture?
Are leaders effectively assessing culture propagation into teams & members when they talk of alignment?
Do the representatives of the organization raise questions relevant to assessing the candidate over a culture fitment at every level / interface?
Related tweet:
The Solution(s) / Work-around(s)
Firstly, there is no flick of a switch / a one stop solution that could be applied in this case. If anything, it is going to need some soul-searching, experimenting, measuring, learning & factoring.
Having said that, “defining a culture” for leadership / C-suite could be a simple thing. But, what use is that if it isn’t propagated top-down such that every team member all the way down hierarchically gets the right download?
Here’s an info-visual leaning into the idea over answering that question...
Let’s break that down now.
→ At the Organizational Level
1.0 Define a Culture Framework
Given the problem at an organization’s level, one would have to:
spend some time discerning & defining their own culture
use simple language to formulate & communicate it
propagate it top-down so that each and every team member gets the message loud and clear
ensure everyone abides by it at all times, come what may
For instance, here’s an example of how an org. that relies largely on feedback culture could formulate it:
We are an organization who believes in holistic growth and we enable that by fostering a culture based on consistent feedback from our customers aimed at empathizing, resolving problems on the go, building long lasting relationships which is the backbone of all our teams & internal processes. We strongly believe “charity begins at home” and follow a motto of “being open to & sharing healthy feedback” all throughout our teams as well.
This could prove to be a big leap forward towards achieving cultural alignment. Once this framework has been defined & deployed, it could lead to fitment which eventually would be a precursor to alignment.
2.0 Assess Cultural Fitment
There’s no point talking tall about “culture” post onboarding all the teams, staff & members. I believe the right place to target is the hiring process.
2.1 Breakdown culture into elements
Defining a culture is just the start but that ought to be broken down to:
organizational culture which talks of the value system the org. is built on
product culture that defines how work gets done internally &
team culture defines how teams come together & collaborate
so as to build accountability making implementation all the more feasible.
Extending our example from the previous point:
The implementation of feedback culture could be done over these steps:
Defining the importance of feedback and placing it atop everything within the organization
Framing all rules emphasizing the importance of feedback, like for instance: not collecting feedback would lead to non-committal, enforcing employees to talk to the customers at various touchpoints towards collecting feedback
Ensuring feedback is propagated top-down to the respective teams & they are acting on it
Drafting metrics to keep TAT / downtime at a bare minimum if that comes into play
Incentivizing teams / performances transparently, so that it could lead to a healthy camaraderie and more smiles amongst the user community
Making it autonomous for any team with the right amount of information to apprise the customer of a problem’s resolution & subjecting it to feedback cycles as required
2.2 Emphasize cultural fitment
In a very broad sense, to be a cultural fit would start with thoroughly understanding the nuances / working of such an organization / system.
When broken down again it could mean:
is the understanding of the high-level goals of the organization clear?
is there abundant clarity on the problems being identified / solved for?
is there thorough understanding of something nuanced like say: positioning?
is it clear how products get built inclusive of rituals followed / the workflow?
does collaboration & the manner in which the work gets done clear?
an understanding of internal problems and resolutions
Ensuring if the candidate has had any prior experience in the matter or could identify some drawbacks and get to quote some advancements or cover a few subjective nuances could be a great way to ascertain it.
Heading back to our example, here are some questions one could ask to determine where the candidate stands on feedback culture & emphasizing that he possesses more than just a peripheral knowledge of it:
How would you make decisions regarding the next steps on a given product / feature?
What parameters does your support teams consider the most important? What are the inputs to judge the performance of support teams?
How did you decide on the performance of a product? Can you take me through the steps?
What questions do you ask in those internal 1:1s with your managers / skip-level meetings?
Supposing you wanted to know your performance over the last silo, how would you go about gaining access to that?
How do your internal teams work when you have to prioritize tasks / even features for that matter? Can you take me through one such example from your most recent experience?
How do you deal with your idea / suggestion being met with utter disagreement?
Supposing you have to turn a team member’s idea down, how would you do that? What would you tell him?
→ At Candidates / Aspirants Level
Proving cultural fitment could be a real struggle sometimes. But, these steps could help you generate that impact leaving a lasting impression over the interviewer at each stage.
99.99% of founders would love a generic discussion on their organization & its culture, provided they have the time for it. Getting into the nitty gritty of how the organization is run, the guardrails, the rules that matter so much to the people who framed them would certainly appreciate questions attempting to understand a slice of their culture, more so coming from someone who isn’t yet a part of their system officially and is inclined towards knowing it.
It is the best thing a candidate could do over any interview so as to hit that sweet spot.
1.0 Ask relevant questions to determine their culture
Every mature organization conducting interviews understands the importance of throwing the prompt back to the candidate albeit the time allotted to it may vary largely.
Over a regular course, it’s likely that interviews run for about a month, at times bordering over 45 days where a candidate would face a minimum of 4-5 rounds. And, the people interviewing usually tend to play different roles across the hierarchy. Each and every interface is a gateway to gain insight into chops, ops & culture provided one is armed with the right questions.
⚠️ !! Attention!!
For a comprehensive list of questions candidates could pop to the interviewers over the course of those rounds so as to lead them to determine the culture of the org. and whether one would be a fit, do check my Twitter thread, it’s out this Saturday @ 5:00 PM IST.
2.0 Establish an understanding of values, aspirations behind those values
It could very easily get delusional over someone quoting some (x) and calling it their culture for it may well be a line that’s mugged up. But, for candidates it becomes absolutely important to get a level down from that veneer and explore the nitty-gritty, the values that the organization lives by.
In fact, candidates would do very well if they can take that understanding and tie it to the aspirations behind those values which could be easily done when one uses analytical ability and one’s experiences to see through the “why” defining the sole purpose of the organization’s existence.
An org. saying we believe in a seamless feedback culture could mean they are totally data driven and would look for an imperative quantitative majority before they move ahead with anything.
3.0 Run through your past experiences / learnings
Experience is a great teacher, provided one has all senses open towards learning always. If your experience happens to be really diverse there shouldn’t be any trouble over you deciphering & cooking up a pitch to project yourself.
Decision: Also, this step ought to be the place where you’ll have to make a decision on whether the culture of the place you plan to step into is all worth it.
“NOT a FIT”: Just supposing their culture doesn’t resonate with you, choose to be discreet about it, just present your bright side and be done with it as nobody is putting you on the spot to make an instant decision right there.
* Use of Mind maps is totally recommended here.
show how you totally understand the culture & its importance
collate all correlations, overlaps you’ve had over past experiences, if any & as relevant
list out problems encountered & how they were solved gradually over phase-wise planning
try & get subjective over highlighting the importance of learning by experimentation as every organization / situation / culture / value could really be totally different altogether
4.0 Collate excerpts (examples) to prove fitment / suggestions & improvements at a broader level
Having conducted many interviews hiring across the hierarchy one knows how it would be a great heart warmer if a candidate literally comes up with a few relevant practical examples taking a leap out of the years of experience he has had which could directly fit in with situations organization is facing currently.
When a bias for action is important, what would score above that, is the ability to quote relevant examples to cover the bigger picture.
And by that, I mean:
problems that were plaguing teams / orgs
levels of analysis / deep dives that one went exploring over
understanding gained and the crucial insight derived out of it
action plans that help onboard teams onto a newer culture stepwise
metrics used to measure the changes, discern friction points
alternate routes explored & the motivations behind each of them
how the fittest route was chosen, highlighting the process behind it
finally, the results or the incremental increase in results
NOTE: These steps could prove to be worthy enough of following even in cases where you don’t find an equivalence over the organization’s culture.
Conclusion
So, over that next interview make sure you take control and ask questions directed at the culture followed, after all you are soon going to be a part of it and it is well within you right to know what happens & more importantly how it happens, so as to be better prepared towards the unknowns you’re stepping into.