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Why Hiring for Culture Fit is a Bad Idea…

Ask most leaders today and unless they’ve been hiding under a rock, they’ll agree that culture is more important than compensation in attracting talent, motivating teams, and building successful companies. Build a great culture and chances are you’ll build a great company. Choose to leave your values and virtues undefined, and well…. Good luck.

So, it’s no surprise that in an age of corporate scandals, remote work burnout, and social isolation during the pandemic, companies have been doubling down on defining their culture and hiring for “cultural fit”. In fact, it’s one of the biggest reasons employers and employees decide to part ways with each other. How many times have we heard or said, “they just weren’t a good cultural fit” on the way out of the door?

So, why is it such a bad idea to hire for cultural fit?

First, let’s get something straight. Despite the controversial title, I’m not saying that culture fit isn’t important. In fact, culture is crucial! It’s what invigorates us in our jobs. It’s what makes us feel included and aligned with our company’s vision. So, of course we’d love if our next hire were someone who felt the same way – aligned with our values and vision.

The problem is that when managers hire for “cultural fit”, what they usually mean is that they like to hire candidates with whom they felt “most comfortable” or “clicked” with them during the interview. Oftentimes, this means they shared a similar background – perhaps they came from the same city, enjoyed the same activities, went to the same school, or had the same experiences in life. And if the interview doesn’t “flow” well, many managers might think it’s because the candidate wasn’t a “fit”.

It’s pretty easy to see how this idea of “fit” can unintentionally create bias in a hiring process – after all, most people feel more comfortable with people who have a similar background or ideas.

“Recruit globally – the bigger the pool, the more diverse and balanced your team will be.“

If you’re looking to create a top tier organization, you need to look for the best grouping of talent – an “all-star” team, if you will. Even in sports, no “all-star” team has a roster of people who look exactly the same. When was the last time you saw a great basketball team with players of the same height and skillset? This is why, at Ionic, we look to recruit globally – the bigger the pool, the better the chance of finding the best talent, and the more diverse the pool, the more well-balanced the team will be.

Here’s how we source and evaluate talent at Ionic:

Recruit global talent – we are a fully-remote company, so we recruit globally. If you’re not remote-ready, access the biggest and most diverse pool of talent you can.

Skills-based assessments – take the time to set up online assessments (cognitive and job specific skills) to help take the bias out of your recruiting. Anyone can write a great resume, but you want someone who can do the job well.

Interview systematically – In 1998, John Hunter and Frank Schmidt published an analysis (of their 85 years of research) that showed that typical, unstructured job interviews were worse than a coin flip in hiring the right person. In fact, interviews that are unstructured only predicts about 14% of an employee’s future performance.

Structured interviews are essential for evaluating talent. At Ionic, only after we assess candidates do we bring them in for an interview. And when we do, we interview in a structured manner – evaluating talent against the core traits that fit with our company’s values. We use the “MAC framework” – how well can someone “self-motivate”, “self-assess”, and “self-correct”? Whatever framework you use, ensure it aligns with your company’s values, aligns with the needs of the job, and is systematic in its approach on evaluating those things.

Unstructured job interviews are worse than a coin flip.

In a future blog post, we’ll dig into the MAC framework and talk about how we developed this framework after learning from some of the world’s most high functioning organizations. But until then, consider this – if you want to build a high potential and high performance team, focus less on cultural fit and more on recruiting from the biggest and most diverse pool you can access, and create processes to take the bias out of your interviews. You’ll find that your team will benefit greatly from talented people who align with your company’s values vs an interviewer’s idea of “cultural fit”.

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Why managers hate remote work

It’s true – most managers hate remote work. 

Yes, they trust their employees.

Yes, they want a culture of flexibility & openness.

Yes, they believe that results matter more than hours logged.

But no – they still hate remote work.

Why?

It’s not that managers don’t like the theory of remote work.

Who doesn’t want to believe that everyone is more productive in their pajamas, banging away at home in an asynchronous manner, only being interrupted from their deep work by their Amazon delivery person? 

It’s just that it’s not a world most managers live in today. 

Most managers are not trying to solve the problem – ‘how I can get John to work more efficiently’.

They’re trying to solve the problem – ‘how I can get John, Kevin, and Sara to all collaborate together to immediately solve this urgent customer issue’.

Remote work makes this more difficult. 

Particularly if the company isn’t a remote-first culture and has always relied on ‘in-person collaboration’. Most Fortune 500 companies are this way today – and many have recently spent MILLIONS to redesign their offices to the ‘open office’ concept to promote more impromptu collaboration.

So what should these managers that were forced to quickly go remote work do?

One easy solution is for managers to set up a virtual office like Sococo.

A virtual office is basically a pseudomorphic depiction of their physical office. It looks just like their physical office – but it’s online instead. Simple as that – no more, no less.

The manager can set up the virtual floor to have individual offices, cubes, meeting rooms, kitchen areas – or whatever else they want to recreate in the space.

The most important part for managers, however, is that their entire team is there and available.

When each team member starts work in the morning – they are automatically placed into their office. The manager can ‘see’ her team, go have impromptu chats, see the various team members collaborating, call a meeting with everyone, etc, etc. 

Just like a physical office – simply online instead.

Sometimes – just simplifying and getting the team back to par is a decent first step…

If you have any questions – please feel free to contact me at @andytryba.

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2 Critical Steps for Fortune 500 Managers Going Remote

If you’re a typical Fortune 500 manager (like I was for 14 years at Intel) – your calendar is rammed with back-to-back meetings and you’re basically spending most of your day running from conference room to conference room. Between those ridiculously overplanned blocks of time – you are jumping in and out of your team’s cubicles – providing guidance to help them achieve their quarterly goals (which were probably changed by your boss in your last meeting). 

Other than your weekly staff meetings and occasional 1:1s – most of your management is by ‘walking around’ and collaborating with your team (since you won’t get to your emails until after your kids go to bed that evening). And if you see a couple of team members huddled together – you jump in and join their discussion for a few minutes.

Despite the chaos – for the most part – you and your team are comfortable with your management style. Your boss is happy and everyone is aligned.

But then your company suddenly orders all employees to work from home.  Now what?

Crap.

At first – you rationalize that it will be fine. I mean – your staff travels on a regular basis, you’ve got a few team members on other campuses and you’ve had a ‘work from home’ policy for a long time. Should be the same now right?

Wrong.

Moving to a 100% remote organization is completely different than Bob calling into your staff meeting from the airport. This is the equivalent of moving from on-prem servers to the cloud – EVERYTHING changes.

Focus on Simplicity – Ignore Everything Else

As the fearless leader – simplify to the basics for now. Trust me – during times of dramatic change – your team is more nervous than you are. So minimize the number of changes you need to make today. Punt on anything other than getting your team back up and functioning.

Ignore your annoying neighbor (who works for a 5 person company) that talks about how he’s been working from home for years and it’s easy.

Ignore the thousands of articles in your inbox promising remote work ‘tips’. None of them were tested in a Fortune 500 company before.

And definitely ignore the various remote work pundits preaching a utopian world – where all your employees are more productive in their pajamas, everyone is happy, and all the work they do is suddenly able to be done asynchronously (which is just a fancy word for ‘no meetings’). 

Someday you’ll get to all that fancy stuff.  But for now – just focus on minimizing the thrash and getting your team back up to productivity (as close to par as possible – a bogie is good enough for now).

Step 1: Adopt a video-first culture

You, and most F500 companies, already have video conferencing tools in place. But in most cases – the video is never turned on.

The reason is that you see most of your employees on a regular basis. So the video component is a ‘nice to have’ in building culture and trust.

In a remote world, however, turning the video on for almost all calls is CRITICAL.

Humans are social beings – and the act of ‘seeing’ your colleagues goes a long way towards maintaining trust, having open communication and furthering the culture of the team.

It may feel ‘weird’ at first to see your colleague’s kitchen/bedroom/office or wherever they are working – but you’ll soon realize that those images become a part of the relationship building. Think of it as a better version of their kids’ photos on their desks in your physical office (which were probably taken 5 years ago anyways).

Be open – have discussions about their setup. And when their kids come into the frame or their cat jumps up on the desk – don’t ignore it – have a human conversation and take your relationship to the next level.

For good insights on how to have a great video conferencing setup – feel free to read this article.

Step 2: Set Up a ‘Virtual Office’ to Replace Your Physical Office

The fastest way to get back to productivity is to simply replace your physical office space with a virtual one.

A virtual what?

Yes – a virtual office.

Virtual offices are pseudomorphic representations of your physical office. You can set up a floor plan that resembles your current office – and recreate a majority of the team interactions that occur today.

You (and each one of your team members) have your own offices, meeting rooms and common spaces.

Want to see if Katherine is in her office and available for a chat? No problem.

Want to join that impromptu discussion that John and Malcom are having? No problem.

Want to close your door so nobody can bother you in your office?  No problem also.

A virtual office is obviously not as good as your physical office – but it’s a close replacement for times like these. There is almost no learning curve, they’re integrated with Zoom/WebEx/Hangouts, and they enable you to work largely like you do today.

The best news of all? You can test it out for free and you don’t even need to ask IT for permission.

We use a product called Sococo – and loved it so much – we bought the company. Here is a link to the free trial.

Here is a quick 3 min video of a virtual office and how this can work for your team.

In Closing

This situation was thrown at you. But as a leader – it’s now your job to calm the troops down and get everyone back to being productive.

The remote working world is great – and will bring a ton of additional benefits to your team. But rather than try to adopt all of them all at once – simplify – and get to the ‘advanced’ concepts later. Your team will be grateful that you’ve calmed down the initial storm and recreated their familiar environment first.

If you have any questions – please feel free to contact me at @andytryba.

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Book Notes: What you do is who you are (Horowitz)

I have to admit that I wasn’t always a big ‘culture’ guy. The word always sounded like a fluffy HR term that didn’t really mean much. Now with a bit more grey hair and a few thousand people spread across the globe – I realize that I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Particularly in the remote team environment – developing culture is much much harder. You have all the variables that work against you – not seeing each other very often, language barriers, various countries, various cultural norms, different holidays, various religions, etc etc etc. If you’re not ABSOLUTELY intentional in defining your company culture – your outcome is literally a random number generator.

Ben Horowitz signing away…

This book by Ben Horowitz hit home for me. The book is written from a perspective of a CEO/Founder (unlike other books in this category written by HR). I could respect it – and I could hear his pains along the way as he learned what really mattered.

One line I loved was ‘Culture is the decisions your people make when you’re not there’. CEOs/Founders forget that, at scale, most of the decisions made in your company are without you there. And how you ensure those decisions are aligned is where culture comes in.

My 3 takeaways from this book

  1. Be intentional about defining your culture – but ensure you also consider how it can be weaponized (Uber example)
  2. The definition of culture is really ‘what does it take to succeed in your company’ – and don’t ask execs or managers to define it
  3. Your culture needs to be who you really are – don’t try to make some pretty descriptions of what you think a company should be. It’s all about what you wakeup and do everyday – that’s your culture and what you’re company culture will be.

Ben’s Checklist

  • Cultural design – aligns w both personality and strategy. Be sure to think how it can be weaponized. 
  • Day 1 orientation – people learn more about what it takes to succeed in org that day than any other. 
  • Shocking rules – so surprising that people ask why it’s here – will reinforce key cultural elements 
  • Outside leadership – sometimes the culture you need is best brought in from an outside pro with a culture you want 
  • Object lesson – public display of importance 
  • Make ethics explicit – don’t leave unsaid 
  • Cultural to make deep meaning – what do they really mean
  • Walk the talk – refrain from choosing what you don’t practice yourself 
  • Make decisions that emphasize priorities 

Here are some super raw notes

  • Culture is the decisions your people make when you’re not there
  • Saying in the military – If you see something below standard and you don’t say anything – then you set a new standard
  • Culture changes over time as market and company changes 
  • Andy Grove – You don’t take the ball and run w it – you deflate it, put it in your pocket, grab another ball and run into the end zone, then inflate the other ball and score 12 points. (Innovative thinking outside the box)
  • Innovative ideas fail more often to succeed. And they are controversial and hard to gain momentum. So cultures typically kill those ideas as ‘dumb’ – particularly in large companies with many layers to kill it. 
  • Virtues are what you do, values are what you believe 
  • Who are we?  ‘Who you are’ is not what you list on the wall – it’s what you do. 
  • Make ethics explicit 
  • Michael Dell famously stated (when Apple was down to 3% MSS) – that he would shut it down and give money back to shareholders. (Before Jobs came back).  Back then – every PC maker was horizontal and the belief was that innovation on supply chain was the future (like Dell)
  • Amazon – frugal culture ‘do more with less’ (door desks, etc). Also written culture – not PPT (only written docs for meetings)
  • Facebook – Move fast and break things (but replaced w Move fast w stable infrastructure)
  • Yahoo – Work hours must be in office (no working from home). 
  • Uber:
    • TK actually designed Uber’s culture carefully – and it worked exactly as designed – but had design flaws
    • Values: Celebrate cities, Meritocracy and toe stepping, Principled confrontation, Winning – champions mindset, Let builders build, Make big bold bets, Always be hustling, Customer obsession, Make magic, Be an owner not a renter, Be yourself, Optimistic leadership, Best idea wins
    • Elevated 1 mindset above all – competitiveness. Do whatever it takes to win. 
    • No evidence that Travis ordered all the unethical actions – but the culture to win at all costs took over. 
    • Culture, like code, can have bugs 
    • And if ethics are the bugs – then many bad things happen
  • Samurai culture
    • I will never fall behind others in the way of the warrior, always ready to serve my lord, honor my parents, serve compassionately in the benefit of others
    • Extent of ones courage (or cowardice) cannot be measured in ordinary times – all is revealed when something happens
    • Awareness of mortality was a big driver – and die at any moment. Ready for death and accept worst outcome. Enables you to be fully live. 
    • 8 virtues:  justice, courage, honor, loyalty, benevolence, politeness, self control, voracity/sincerity 
      • Honor:  immortal part of themselves. Individual name matters throughout time 
      • Politeness:  Most profound way to express love and respect for  others (still works this way in Japan)
    • ‘Samurai word is harder than steel’
  • Bill Campbell – you’re doing it for your team, don’t let them down
  • How to know if your culture is working – ask yourself what it takes for the employees to succeed and get ahead. Don’t ask exec team or managers – you’ll get back what you want to hear. 
  • Design the culture. And be you 
  • Disagree w Drucker quote – strategy and culture work together 
  • Growth question in interview – what’s one thing you could have done better in your current job?
  • Wartime vs Peacetime CEOs – typically people that like to work for one type doesn’t like working for the other
  • Trust – tell the truth even if people don’t want to hear it (state facts clearly, what was cause, what is meaning and end result of action)
  • Kimchi problems – the more you bury them the hotter they get
  • Be okay with bad news – embrace it publicly and encourage it to be aired 
  • People don’t leave companies – they leave managers. Take genuine interest. 

In a remote world – we have to work that much harder to develop a unified company culture. Don’t neglect defining it – and don’t neglect reinforcing it on a daily basis…

If anyone has additional notes from the book or ideas on remote company culture in general – love to hear them! You can reach me on Twitter – @andytryba

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What to look for in a remote job?

The audio version of the What is an Authentic Remote job? blog post

What the heck is ‘remote work’? Is a job that lets you work from home on Fridays ‘remote work’? Is a freelancer building a website for a client as supplemental income ‘remote work’? Is your designer working in Romania doing ‘remote work’? Unfortunately – the answer is ‘yes’ to all of these. How confusing… We need a better categorization of ‘remote jobs’.

Categories of remote jobs

Not all remote jobs are created equal. To break down the generic term of ‘remote job’ – let’s define 3 classes of remote jobs to get on the same page:

  1. ‘Work from home’ remote jobs: These jobs are pretending to be ‘remote’ – but really they are perks of an onsite job. This is ‘work from home Fridays’ or ‘satellite offices’ or companies that have a policy that simply lets folks work from home on occasion – but it’s expected that they are in the office for the majority of their working career. Companies tend to be trendy and offer this type of flexibility – but in reality – it’s not truly a part of their culture and secretly the managers hate people that work from home too often (they assume you’re on the golf course). This is not the future of remote work.
  2. Freelancer remote jobs: These are 100% remote jobs – but they are freelancers and other ‘on-demand’ roles. These positions are typically considered part of the ‘gig-economy’ and suffer from the friction of a marketplace. In a marketplace, you typically have to bid on jobs, which – on a global basis – tends to depress the price/hour (yes – that person in Vietnam is willing to work less than you are – and be happy with it). The bid/ask system also creates wild fluctuations in your income, has uncertainty and is project-by-project vs a long-term career. The projects also tend to be tactical and low skill roles. This is also not the future of remote work – but as Upwork has proven – there are a lot of people willing to work nights/weekends to supplement their income.
  3. Authentic remote jobs: This is the future of remote work – 100% remote, full-time / 40 hr/w roles, transparent wage rate, career/growth-oriented, all workers use both remote communication & connection tools, goals/metrics are clear, tasks are able to be completed asynchronously and the company has a remote culture. These are the Rolls Royce of all remote jobs – and what we all aspire to get. These roles will continue to grow exponentially and will have a massive impact on the global economy.

Diving into the details of Authentic remote jobs

100% remote

The true remote job has no borders. This isn’t ‘can be anywhere – as long as it’s on the East Coast of the US’. Real remote jobs are global. Let me repeat – they are GLOBAL. And they are this way to find the best person in the WORLD for the position – not the best person in your zip code.

Full time, 40 hours/week

Authentic remote jobs are not part-time nor on a bid/ask marketplace system. I’ve never seen a critical position in a company or a key player be ‘transactional’ and only show up part of the time. Additionally – the best in the world already have full-time roles – and they’re looking to put their entire brain/efforts into the next challenge.

Transparent wage rate

Despite the touchy/feely comments people make about their motivations for a job, at the end of the day, money matters – and the best Authentic remote jobs are transparent on what the wage rate is in the job description. According to a recent study by Glassdoor – money is the #1 motivator for 67% of job seekers. Remote or not remote – wage rate matters – so be transparent and include them in the job description.

Career/growth-oriented

Though money is a motivator – the best in the world are also looking for intellectual challenges that enhance their careers. This is consistent on remote and non-remote jobs – but even more enhanced when the job seeker now has an infinite number or job opportunities available to them – not just the selection in their zip code.

Use remote communication & connection tools

Many companies have video conferencing and collaboration tools – but ironically – companies that are not ‘remote-first’ fail to use them properly. Managers have to ‘remember’ to post that file on Google drive, the team doesn’t use video in the meetings, everything is synchronous, etc, etc. Authentic Remote jobs are only in companies that treat remote workers as equals.

Success goals & metrics

In a typical office job – if a role isn’t terribly well defined – you can walk around and ask your colleagues and manager to help nudge you in the right direction. In 100% remote jobs – this is much more difficult and the definition of success needs to be more clearly laid out. What are the goals, how is the work itself done, what are the objective metrics, what is the expected calendar are all important to clarify. All Authentic Remote jobs have these characteristics – so success or failure is clear and transparent.

Asynchronous

Asynch has also become a bit of a buzzword in the remote world. But the importance of it remains – Authentic Remote jobs have to be able to be done without dependence on synchronization. Unlike everyone huddled in an office – the remote worker needs to be able to complete a majority of the task on their own – in their own time. This doesn’t mean the remote worker doesn’t collaborate with others – it simply means the task itself can be broken down to individual components that the remote worker can complete on their own (with very little dependence on others).

Remote culture

True Authentic Remote jobs are in companies that are ‘remote-first’. This isn’t ‘work from home Fridays’ – it’s a proper understanding of how to build their company structure for remote organization, how to manage and cluster timezones of remote workers, how to understand the power deltas between office workers vs remote workers (ideally there are no physical offices), how to build culture remotely, how to bridge cultural gaps, and how to define roles to be clear/async/measurable.

Examples of Authentic Remote jobs from remote-first companies

Companies such as HotJar offer remote positions and check all the items on our list: they have a remote culture, they are fully remote, employ people from any region as long as the time-zone allows them to be aligned with other team members, offers employment contract for talent in specific countries or contractor agreement for the rest, paid holidays, team collaboration allowance, holiday budget, etc. That is the true remote vision and Authentic Remote jobs.

On the other side – companies like DataDog offer some remote positions, are open to offering 100% remote work, but employees need to live in the US or other areas where the company has offices. It lacks the remote culture, it does not have a fully distributed/remote team. Even if some of the offered jobs are remote, according to the classification above, the lack of remote culture makes those jobs simply flexible jobs, not Authentic Remote jobs.

Conclusion

Going back to the beginning – to get to the end state where the term ‘remote jobs’ evolves to be ‘all jobs’ – we need to be clear on our definitions and what we’re trying to expand. Specifically – employers – develop more Authentic Remote jobs as they are the future of work…