Cultural fit

This posting is more of an experience sharing that I came across in my career.

It happened in one of the manufacturing industries that I worked for. We had an opening for workshop manager for which we were looking at many candidates.  The position was a head of maintenance function to take care of the heavy vehicles maintenance. It had around 100 blue collar workmen, supervisors and engineers. It was a critical position since any downtime in the heavy vehicles would have direct impact on the production and we were looking for a competent and street smart Manager who could handle things independently and support the production without or with very less down time.

We came across one interesting profile from Army Background.  He had a very good technical competence and he was the choice of everyone till we gave him a situation and asked him how he would go about handling it.

Are you wondering what that situation was?  It was a simple situation that you would typically come across in a manufacturing set-up, ie., workmen refusing to do the work or slowing down.  So the situation given to him was if a bunch of workmen refused to do the work given, how would he deal with them and get things done?  To which, he said that, how could they refuse to do it if a work is given by their superior. It cannot happen and they have to do it?  We explained and repeated the situation but we kept hearing the same answer.

May be his past experience in Army, wherein one is always expected to do what he is asked to do and without any questioning, could have conditioned his mind and working style. Not all army personnel need to have this conditioning and we cannot generalize with just one example.

So he was not selected though he was technically good. 

One big inference that you can make out this is,

though technical competence is important,

without cultural fit, it carries very less significance.

It's only with cultural fit, one can perform well and build a long-term career.

Employees working in various organizations

are used to those cultures and

they tend to carry the same culture when they join your Organization. When there is a fundamental difference between their and your culture, the conflict arises.

If their adaptability is poor, it adds fuel to the fire.

So next time, when you see a candidate, do check his cultural fit. As an organization, what do you expect out of your potential candidate? 

For example, in Retail or hotel industries, employees would be directly interacting with the customer. You will have all sorts of customers, the Good, the bad and the Ugly. So the employees need to have customer facing skills, communication skills and should not have a short fuse or should not be temperamental. Employees with these skills would be the right cultural fit. 

Its a lose-lose situation to hire someone who is culturally not a good fit.  So when you hire someone, do assess him on cultural fitness unless you want to onboard a candidate who is like a square peg in a round hole.

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