Cultural Fit, What Rubbish!

All companies probably believe that they must ensure "cultural fit" when hiring new people. However, too many players do not have strong cultures to speak off and are confused about the “best” talents that they require to successfully and meaningfully go through this exercise. Specifically, more often than not, companies:
1. Describe their cultures in similar ways; collaborative, entrepreneurial, and family-like. They also like to refer to themselves as complex, ambiguous, and challenging environments. Ad agencies in particular tend to identify their cultures with “chaos” which they embrace rather than try to tame by enforcing specific rules and structures.
2. Articulate the same values. A recent study by Ki and Kim (2009) showed that “respect to clients”, “service”, “strategic”, and “results” were the most frequently emphasized values among ethical statements provided by 605 public relations agencies in the United States. On the other hand, “balance”, “fairness”, “honor”, “social responsibility”, and “independence” were the least frequently mentioned values in their ethical codes. Surprisingly as well, none of the sampled agencies included any sanctions regarding enforcement of their particular code of ethics.
3. Remain misaligned when it comes to talent practices. It is not uncommon to find that employee policies and operational practices do not actually support their cultural statement (e.g. we are open-minded). At the extreme, employees that are in fact closest to the desired culture may not experience and receive sufficient recognition, advancement opportunities, and high job satisfaction levels.
4. Demonstrate "me-too" thinking when preparing talent policies, rewards, and benefits just like they go on the same mission relevant to their industry. Almost uniformly, ad agencies aspire to “generate big ideas” (award-winning ideas or outstanding advertising campaigns) and provide a full range of communications services for their clients.
5. Look for similar skill sets, knowledge, experience, and just about everything else when looking for talent; self-starter with a `can-do` attitude, ability to contribute to and lead diverse teams, ability to present logical and persuasive arguments, passionate, and driven, etc.
6. Settle down for generic and inclusive corporate cultures. Many employees cannot explicitly discuss and distinguish between the cultures of the companies that they have worked for. Worst, many successful careers can span a number of companies over several years which suggests that either employees are simply good chameleons and flexible and adaptive enough to blend in or that there is nothing unique and extraordinary about their different workplaces.

Hence, checking for cultural fit is of substance and should only take place if the company understands what their actual and desired organizational culture is, has low staff turnover, and is growing at a steady pace so as to ensure successful acculturation processes by new hires.

Performance Conversations

One of the most important and original books of late regarding performance management is written by Christopher D. Lee, PhD, Performance Conversations: An Alternative to Appraisals (2006; published by Fenestra Books, Tucson, Arizona). The author thoroughly critiqued the performance appraisal tool and provided an alternative approach; Performance Conversations Model.

Having observed the book's core ideas implemented into a corporate setting in Mainland China, I would like to share some of the challenges that arose.

First, performance conversations created impractical employee expectations for receiving a raise or bonus after every performance conversation. But, since these conversations occurred on a quarterly basis, managers' obviously could not increase pay every 3 months for an employee even if they received positive feedback. So, employees invariably felt disappointed.

Second, performance conversations were too structured mainly because a form needed to be completed every time conversations occurred. In addition, many participants were not dedicated to maintaining a performance portfolio and performance log - a journal of duties, challenges, and solutions (the so called "evidence") on a daily/weekly basis. Indeed, this prerequisite was perceived as a burden by most and just additional paper work.

Third, performance conversation meetings did not seem to be the best platform for addressing inadequate performance. Inevitably, this model linked the quality of an employee’s output with the manager’s performance in accordance with the fundamental belief that an "Employee can only be as good as their supervision, support, and guidance". Therefore, the manager who assessed an employee's performance as poor would also need to acknowledge their own weaknesses and mistakes.

Fourth, performance conversations did not alleviate the need for an “evaluation” and consequently demand for 360 degree feedback in the organization intensified. Employees also wanted to be assessed against a set of performance criteria for their current position.

For the abovementioned difficulties, China as a whole is not ready for a performance management approach based on Theory Y of human motivation.