Leadership: Company Culture, Culture eats Strategy for Breakfast and why it is important to talk about it at a very early stage of the hiring process?

Corporate culture is not an abstract definition but a set of values, practices, beliefs and behaviors that determine the organization.??

Organizational culture most commonly known definition is "the way we do things around here" (Cowling & Lundy, 1996).

Understanding your company culture influences how key decisions are made within the organization, the implications on internal teams and outside pattern of behavior with customers, suppliers and 3rd parties.

It is essential to understand your internal company culture to establish the best hiring practices, as well as to provide a better onboarding experience to new team members that can manifest the culture internally from day one, rather than them be re-discovering it and in some cases having set the wrong expectations, that at later stage determine the faith of retention of such employees.

So let's start from the fundamentals.??

Usually company culture is very distinctive and does not represent a positive or negative current. There is no "right" or "wrong" culture as such but rather a measurable type that allows to identify the patterns which could be translated into a company vision and behaviors internally and externally, as well as it affects the talent branding which can be communicated to the outside candidate's world.?

It is essential nowadays to know your organizational culture well across all teams as most common mistake is to hire wrongly because of misinterpretation of the expectations set by individuals and leadership teams inside the company about the culture or not necessarily communicating it properly during the interview phase and not bringing the attention of a candidate about organizational specifics in the first place.

Commonly there are 4 basic types of company culture (by Quinn and Kim S. Cameron):

The Clan culture,

Or a family collaborative culture that puts a lot of emphasis on a team work. It is a culture that has a rather relationship, almost friendship type of environment to achieve the strategic goals. People and teamwork are the essence that binds the internal processes and typically can be seen in smaller Family Owned businesses who treat their employees as part of this family.

The Adhocracy Culture?

Perhaps this is more widely known as the culture of start-up companies that seek to disrupt the market and always challenge the status quo. This culture is all about innovation and creativity. In some corporate environments this could be a specific department that manifests such culture but which can not determine the overall company behavioral pattern as the whole, it rather has a distinctive feature for that specific team. In other words a start-up within the corporate.?That exists - honestly!

The Market Culture?

Highly competitive work environments where systems and process as well as the results and targets prevail the definition of a clan culture where generating the results through a systematic and professional process driven approach will outplay the family work environment spirit. Some FMCG companies could be a good example.

The Hierarchy Culture?

Imagine the company where processes and procedures are the essentials of business and strictly followed to achieve consistency and predictability. The set of work is pre-determined and focused on completing the processes accordingly rather than innovate and take initiative. The word improvise does not exist and everything must be done by the book. Most likely such organizations exists in highly regulated environments such as government authorities or insurance companies.

"Culture Eats Strategy for Breakfast"

We all heard that phrase: "Culture Eats Strategy for breakfast" by Peter Drucker.

Some might argue that this is a rather bold statement that undermines business fundamentals, but it still has a lot of ground giving the fact that culture determines how the execution processes operate within the company as they are heavily influenced by the teams that have very specific set of behaviors to do the actionable part in a very first place. That is why it is essential to make sure that CULTURE is understood internally first and manifested across team members secondly!?

In other words culture understanding among employees is as essential as it enables your strategy and performance. Culture creates internal synergy and helps the work flow.

Why is it important to talk about the culture at the very early stage of the hiring process with new candidates and during onboarding phase with new employees?

To hire a great fitted employee into the organization is a hard task. Typically the selection process can take longer than 4 months.

It is essential to effectively communicate your company's culture to prospective hires right from the get-go, as it contributes to the strategic goals and objectives you aim to achieve.

To put it simply prospective candidates must be communicated upfront what culture exists internally within the organization, therefore the processes of the interviews are to be designed specifically in order to determine the fit culturally right in the beginning of the hiring process and not after.

Focusing on the job description only and asking questions around the skills and competences will not be enough.

Cultural fit is important to both: The Hiring Team and a Candidate.

It is essential to ask specific questions that are designed to understand whether a candidate already had previous experience in the past with your corporate culture type and that healthy set of expectations is set and matched right from the start eliminating misalignments, misunderstandings that lead to low retention at the end.

About the author: Stan Kalinin?draws on an extensive track record of more than 14 years of search and executive team-building expertise, with particular focus on Medical Devices and Life Sciences industries covering Western and Central Europe, MENA, and APAC (Singapore, Japan, South Korea). He has built teams for start-ups and supported growth hiring for large multinational MedTech companies across multiple regions and divisions, providing bespoke candidate search and selection services, specifically designed for the MedTech industry. Prior to joining the firm, Mr. Kalinin placed senior and mid level executives for search mandates across the Medical Technology, Real Estate, Energy, and Pharma sectors across Europe, MENA, and CIS.