Who you hire, and how you do it, has a big impact on the culture of your company. Lots of companies aren't helping themselves with this.
It's been my observation, over a great many years, that the companies who are most eager to change their culture are the ones that do the most to entrench their culture. These companies trumpet the distinctiveness of their culture yet at the same time they are running long (even indefinite) programs to change that culture. How can this be?
A lot of the problems begin, literally and figuratively, in the recruitment process. That doesn't mean it's the fault of the recruitment team. It means that the company can't or won't help itself in the choice of who it hires. Sometimes this problem is so entrenched you could liken it to a friend (and we all have at least one of these) who keeps choosing the wrong type of romantic partner and wondering why their relationships don't work out.
A technology company I know, which shall remain nameless, is very proud of its hiring process. This process involves as many as twelve separate interviews and a great deal of analytical scrutiny. Candidates are interviewed by all kinds of people in the company - seniors, peers, subordinates and cross-functional leaders. Many of these people can't evaluate the candidate on their skills for the role (because they don't themselves understand the requirements of that role) so all they can do is assess the candidate for cultural fit. There is nothing else they could be asked to assess them on, realistically, so their evaluation is about how the candidate might, or might not, assimilate, if they were to join the organisation. In this company, these interviewers are asked to give either a thumbs up or a thumbs down to the candidate on this question.
And so an averaging process is created in which the only people who make it through are those who "fit in" with the company. The internal recruiter running the evaluation gets back a report containing nine thumbs down and three thumbs up, and they tell the candidate that they will not be proceeding further. The candidates who look a bit different, whom the company might NEED to hire in order to shift its culture, even it doesn't WANT (deep in its bones) to hire them, get passed over. Then the new hire, like all the old hires, is put through the cultural change workshop in the hope that the company of tomorrow will look different to the company of today. So this kind of hamster wheel develops, in which a continuous cultural change program is trying to alter the behaviour of a consistent supply of similar candidates and employees.
Culture resides mainly in the human capital of your organisation. So if you are trying to change culture, it's probably human behaviour that you are trying to change, and most people behave pretty consistently over time. For this reason, cultural change is really difficult to achieve and sustain. Companies would be better off trying hire a different kind of person (without compromising on the role skills required) than trying to change the mindset and the behaviour of the people after they have hired them.
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