Culture Gaps Your Company Hides
In Winter Nights,
Haikus Are Meteorites.
Rhymes with the title, right? I guess Matsuo Bashō would be proud.
A lot of companies rely heavily on their so-called “great company culture.” They try to sell that idea to every possible candidate. Sometimes it works, sometimes it does not. But as an experienced recruiter, I know, it’s complicated.
Let’s take the company values as an example. You have them, right? They are somewhere on your fancy website, beautifully described, so pure and patriotic. Candidates read them, join the company and see none of your c-level folks reflect those values with their behavior.
Does this company have values? No.
Often, they announce “we appreciate teamwork.” I usually start deleting lines from company’s job descriptions whenever I feel like they are not true. If I don’t see the described responsibilities in actual work, I just send them to hell.
Behavioral patterns
A big part of company culture is being formed intuitively with behavioral patterns. If top management is always late for the meetings to show their importance — that’s a behavioral pattern, and part of your company culture. Anyone in your company will later adopt that thing unconsciously, even the most responsible people. A lot of leaders miss these details, but they are critical.
Job titles
Job titles are a vital part of your company culture. I see a lot of companies creating roles and positions in their company for specific people, on meritocracy basis. These are political decisions, not business decisions and mixing politics with business is always a bad idea, especially in IT sector. For example, you create unnecessary VP positions, the so-called Director positions just to please people so that they can feel their power on a paper. Of course, this leads to another culture gap, because these people start to act weirdly, you can see this over time. They change their wardrobe, buy some useless shit, even the way they walk and gesticulate begins to change. Power, you know! It changes them.
Cultural fit
The idea of “cultural fit” is a disaster. It’s wrong on so many levels. It’s a justification phrase for the decision makers who want to choose like-minded guys that won’t cause problems later for them. It kills the diversity and narrows company’s creative database. Good culture also has clear criteria for promotion. It should give answers only, I repeat, ONLY to these simple questions:
- What technical skills do I need to promote?
- What leadership skills do I need to promote?
Forget about the rest!
If you are a recruiter, an hr, decision maker I feel you. I know you have seen a lot of wrong things, but as a professional, no matter in what stage of your career you are, you should concentrate on your skills. If your company has culture gaps, you’ll see the patterns. You can’t miss that if someone is being promoted just because he’s a friend or a lover of your CEO (or a friend lover). That’s okay, not fair, but okay! “At least they promised you a great culture and free cookies.” Leave this kind of companies. Fixing them is proven to be impossible historically. Keep in mind that the criteria for promotion should be visible, fair and transparent from day one.
Companies change hyper-fast. Practices that work great now might not work a year later or can even be counter-productive. You can’t shape culture with documents, you should see it with your eyes, then write it down, and if people don’t act upon it, you should throw it away.
Interviews are part of your culture. Choose your interviewers wisely. They should be very humble, preferably phlegmatic kind of guys, so they have nothing to prove to the person sitting in front of them.
Did this article hurt your eyes or some other part of your body? If yes, that’s not the article, that’s the truth which has started to hurt you. I know, I am being sarcastic at times. But if my sarcasm is helping you heal your company’s top management problems, then that’s OK! Please don’t just read this article and clap for it. Go ahead, make changes, establish the right company culture, hire the right people and start working!
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