Culture Fit and Culture Add

*Note: The following text is the output of transcribing from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors.

Bill Berthel
Welcome to The Get Emergent Podcast. The Get Emergent podcast guides leaders to creatively strengthen relationships and improve performance of their leadership and those they lead. I’m Bill Berthel.

Ralph Simone
And I’m Ralph Simone

Bill Berthel
Ralph, the topic of organizational culture is so often in my conversations with leaders, especially if there’s either recruitment or growth opportunities in the organization. This idea of a culture fit and a culture ad is a pretty cool feature. I think we’re going to kind of flesh out today here.

Ralph Simone
Yeah, well, as you know, we all read and listen a lot of different things, and not just as it relates to our business adding staff, but also another business that I have an interest in. I was struck by this concept when listening to a podcast by Adam Grant.

Ralph Simone
And it got me thinking two things. One, am I thinking about this the wrong way when I think about culture fit, or, and I think where I landed. Am I not thinking about it completely enough? Because I think you want to have a fit and an add if you’re really looking to continually have performance in innovation in your organization.

Bill Berthel
I love the addition of the add I think everyone would strongly agree a cultural fit is essential. We know what it looks like when that doesn’t happen, and that’s often quite dysfunctional.

Ralph Simone
Yeah. And I think we’re thinking about the fit maybe around mission and values.

Bill Berthel
Right.

Ralph Simone
And particularly the behaviors that are aligned with those values. But I think the add is what leads to us thinking about things differently. There’s this thing in culture’s organizational awareness, finding out what you need to do to be successful in the culture. But those things also could be limiting. And so, I really like the idea, you know, as we continue to expand our team is to look for fit and add and for somebody that will challenge the status quo, somebody who will ask questions to think about, well, why aren’t we offering these topics? Or why aren’t we trying to attract that particular market? It’s things that we typically wouldn’t need. But if everybody is the same, if everybody is a great fit, you may not get that diversity of thinking that will yield innovation.

Bill Berthel
What’s coming up for me is I think you tend to start hiring people who think, a lot alike. Right. And maybe in some teams that’s okay, but you don’t get the diversity for that innovation. You don’t perhaps get some purposeful disruption when that’s needed or wanted. Like you said, challenge the status quo. I think what’s so important, though, is that there’s a cultural fit that’s aligned with values and behaviors. So, it’s not challenging in a way that is either damaging or disruptive in a negative way. It’s a building of, not tearing down of.

Ralph Simone
And I think it’s tricky because I think people aren’t sure how to manage it. Because I think we are looking for some type of nonconformity. Right? And self-expression that will lead us to look at things through a different lens. If we put our EI hat on though, it needs to be done in a way in which people can hear it and consider it and move in that direction. And I think this is where the both / and comes in. But if we don’t have people that will self-express. And quite frankly, I think when I look at diversity, the reason you want diversity is so that you can look at things from multiple perspectives. So, you can challenge the status quo, and you can actually find new opportunities before what you’re currently doing is broken.

Bill Berthel
Absolutely. And you want those, different expressions. Right. Some of them may even be a somewhat cross perspective. But you want that. Right. You wanna be able to look at things from different angles, reframing it, seeing it from different experiences, different places.

Ralph Simone
I think one of my second jobs, second organization I worked for, I think I was a little bit of a nonconformist. It was more of a traditional organization. They had a hierarchy that was, honored and respected. And it certainly had its upsides. But I had just come from manufacturing setting where we were involved in quality circles, employee involvement, where we were saying, let’s really listen to. The voices of the people closest to problems or closest to the solutions. And so, I brought an element of nonconformity to this organization that I think, coupled with a little

Ralph Simone
finesse, helped the organization look and do things differently. And so, while I may have fit their mission and their values, how I went about things was very different based on my experiences.

Bill Berthel
So, I love that example. Right. The behaviors of an effective, I’m gonna say change agent. Right. You’re brought in as a change agent in a way, has finesse, they have some tact. Right. They’re not coming in in most cases. what’s the old saying, Like a bull in a China shop. Right. You’re not going and breaking stuff. You’re building relationships, you’re working to influence. You’re finessing those changes but not sticking to status quo. Right. Not letting things erode, not letting things go back, quote unquote normal. Yeah.

Ralph Simone
And I think it’s finding the right key. It’s the George Bernard Shaw and the right key. You can say anything in the wrong key, nothing. It’s not to say, well, I’ve done this before and you haven’t, or this works, or where I used to work, this is how we did it. It’s saying, I’m curious if you’ve thought about doing it this way. And I’m wondering what you think the impact would be. So, it’s really framing it in a different way, but not being afraid to challenge things that have gone unchallenged for whatever reason.

Bill Berthel
I’m a little curious. You think there’s cultures that just need the fit and not an add?

Ralph Simone
I don’t know. So, I guess my gut is no because all organizations need to evolve, all organizations need to grow. And the reason my gut is no is because of the complexity and pace of change. I’m not sure you can do it fast enough organically. And so, I think all cultures benefit from intentionally hiring people that are cultural adds, not cultural fits.

Bill Berthel
Yeah, I love that. So silly example that’s coming up for me. That has even changed. And I think there had often been a negative association with going to The Department of Motor Vehicles. Right. The DMV.

Ralph Simone
It used to be.

Bill Berthel
To there used to be. I don’t know. So, I think through technology and so many things you can do right, online, automatically, self-serve, through the DMV, not going to. The office. I think has created so much space and time in the DMV office that I went recently, and it was delightful. Like the folks there were service oriented and had time and they saw me as a person. They did everything right from a service perspective.

Ralph Simone
I couldn’t agree more. My last few visits there as well.

Bill Berthel
So, I would have answered, well, the DMV is never going to change. In a past version of this conversation would have been in that space, there’s, I think, room for innovation and effective, purposeful change. I think in any culture. We see it happening in the military, we see more voice that the private has compared to years before because there’s a valued perspective that’s there for that individual. So, I think we’re seeing it in places we may not expect it.

Ralph Simone
Well, I think we want to be intentional about it. We want to have these ideas to reinvent ourselves before we get reinvented out of business.

Bill Berthel
That’s right.

Ralph Simone
And you know, I’m remembering another podcast I listened to with Danny Meyer, who was the entrepreneur and the restaurateur from Shake Shack in Gramercy Park. He wants his people to actually challenge things, but he also wants his people to experience the things. And then look for ways to make them better. And I think that’s the cultural add. I think we’re looking for fit and add, and I think if we have too much fit, we could have too much groupthink. We may not evolve or change fast enough. Because we want to take advantage of the differences that people bring to the organization. We don’t want those to be impediments.

Bill Berthel
So, I love it as I’m netting out this conversation in my mind. Cultural fit and cultural add is essential not just for effective leadership, but for purposeful change and innovation in a group or an organization.

Ralph Simone
Absolutely. Without question. So, it’s really changed my lens. I’m involved actually in three organizations, two for profit companies, and I’m a President of a non-profit board. And I’m starting to put. We’re adding people in all three of those entities. And I’m starting to think about it much or at least slightly differently around fit and add. And how do we interview for that and how do we unleash that and how do we utilize that to strengthen the impact of those three organizations?

Bill Berthel
That’s fantastic. Hey, thanks for the conversation, Ralph.

Ralph Simone
Thank you, Bill.

Bill Berthel
And thank you for listening, folks. We hope you enjoyed this episode and that you’re looking forward to more. You can listen to a new podcast two times every month here at Get Emergent or wherever you listen to your podcasts. And hey, if you pick something up that you’re gonna apply to your leadership and your work, let us know how it goes by reaching out to support@ getemergent.com or directly to Ralph or I. Thanks for listening.