Organizations are made up of individuals, each with their own character. The way they behave together, relate to each other, the attitudes and values they share, and the environment they create is the organization’s culture. And, since culture is an organization’s only sustainable competitive advantage, you must hire for character, must make culture a core component of your onboarding program, and must manage the balance of consequences around culture.
Pulling from Webster and others, Perplexity sums up character as a person’s “core ethical nature and the qualities that define them as an individual, particularly in terms of morality, integrity, and how they conduct themselves in challenging situations.” It goes on to suggest a person’s character is shaped by their upbringing and early experiences, education and learning, personal choices and habits, and life experiences and challenges.
Similarly, organizational culture has multiple definitions ranging from Seth Godin’s “People like us do things like this” to complex psychological surveys of organizations to get at the collective ethical nature, qualities and traits. We use a middle way, defining it as an organization’s behaviors, relationships, attitudes, values, and environment (BRAVE.)
In any case, when an entrepreneur starts something, its culture starts as a reflection of their own personal character. Whether they do it implicitly or explicitly, that organization’s first hires will be more likely to think about and do things the way the entrepreneur does. After that, the characters of those hired by the people hired by others each will be one step further removed.
Hire for character
You can’t directly hire for character. But you can hire for preferences across behaviors, relationships, attitudes, values, and environment (BRAVE). One approach is to map your aspirational culture and the preferences of the people you’re considering on a chart like the one below so you know where they’re going to fit in and where they’re going to help you evolve. This is another reason why your first interview question should be about why they want the job.
Make culture a core component of your onboarding program
Use the same chart in helping to onboard new hires. In every case, new hires need to converge into the existing culture before trying to evolve it. If they don’t, the culture will force them out. As Mark Field’s said, “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” But it eats new hires as a passing snack. Expect senior executives to start evolving the culture sooner than will more junior people.
Use the chart – modified for your aspirational culture – to help all understand where the organization is now and where it’s heading. This is about shining a light on your unwritten rules and group expectations to make it possible for people to follow them and not get eaten.
There are five stages in onboarding: aligning, acquiring, accommodating, assimilating, accelerating. Make culture a component of each so you are:
- Aligning all around the BRAVE preferences you’re looking for before hiring anyone
- Acquiring by hiring for character per above
- Accommodating by helping people get started in a way that aligns with your culture
- Assimilating new hires in by actively introducing them to positive culture carriers
- Accelerating progress by managing the balances of consequences around culture
Manage the balance of consequences around culture
At one level, this is about encouraging acceptable cultural attributes and discouraging unacceptable attributes. But think about this in four different ways:
- Rewarding desired behaviors, relationships, attitudes, values and attitudes (BRAVE components)
- Punishing undesired BRAVE components
- Not rewarding undesired BRAVE components
- Not punishing desired BRAVE components
The last looks silly on first glance. But it’s terrifying how many times we punch someone in the face for doing what we ask them to do. Think about the person who displays a proactive attitude by taking on more work than they were asked to do. How do they get “rewarded”? By being given even more and more work until they break.
Everything communicates. Everyone sees the consequences that befall people that do the things you ask them to do and do things you don’t want them to do. If you look the other way enough times with people doing counter-cultural things to deliver desired business results, those counter-cultural things become the real culture. This is why violating your culture should result in a public hanging.
John Hall
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