How to Build a Culture of Co-Creators

August 12, 2016 by Shin Inoue

ForUsAll has an audacious goal — to fix America’s $6 trillion retirement gap and give every American a fair shot at a brighter financial future.

Our audacious goal isn’t for the faint of heart. To tackle one of the biggest societal challenges our country faces today, we need to be very intentional about the people we hire and the culture we’re building together.

At ForUsAll, we’re building a culture of co-creators.

Our co-creators possess six super powers: enthusiasm, intelligence, empathy, scrappiness, resilience, and passion. (Many of the characteristics and interview questions we use to spot these brilliant qualities are adopted from Laszlo Bock’s Work Rules. Thanks Laszlo!)

Super Power #1 — Enthusiasm

These are the people who have an almost annoying level of enthusiasm. Contagious positive energy. When they see a problem, they just can’t sit still. They cannot be contained in a box and can’t help themselves but to fix it. They also score high on conscientiousness “work to completion” — meaning they don’t stop until a job is done rather than quitting at good enough.

Interview questions:

• Tell me about a time when you acted like a founder instead of like an employee.
• Tell me about a time that you initiated something that surprised the company.
• What do you want to stand for?
• What stories will people tell about you, your work, your team?

Super Power #2 — Intelligence (emotional and logical)

We want intelligent, curious people who nimbly learn and adapt to new situations. They’ve solved hard problems in their lives and can lean into the challenges thrown at them.

Interview questions:

• Tell me about a time your initiative failed. (Note: if they can’t answer this question move on. You want someone who can identify when they’ve failed and admit to it.)
• What was the biggest insight gained from that failure?
• How did you use the insights to turn around from the failure?)

Super Power #3 — Empathy

Empathy for teammates: We want teammates who can bring the people around them together to collaborate and achieve something bigger than themselves.

Interview questions:

• Tell me about a time your behavior had a positive impact on your team. (Follow-up: What was your primary goal and why? How did your teammates respond? Moving forward, what’s your plan?)
• Tell me about a time that you put the best interest of the team before your own.
• Tell me about a time you had difficulty working with someone (can be a co-worker, classmate, client). What made this person difficult to work with for you? (Follow-up: What steps did you take to resolve the problem? What was the outcome? What could you have done differently?)

Customer empathy — we want people who go above and beyond to serve the customers, who respect and never look down upon their abilities/challenges.

Interview questions:

• Tell me about the customer that you serve today.
• Tell me everything you know about them.
• How do they feel about your company? What do they think of you?
• What is the smallest thing you’ve done for your customer that you are really proud of?
• Tell me about the time that you disagreed with your boss about how to serve the customer.

Super Power #4 — Scrappiness

As a small startup taking on the many Goliaths, you are always going up against incumbents who have 100x, maybe 1,000x more resources than you do. Our chances of winning against Goliath hinges on our ability to turn constraints into strengths.

Interview questions:

• Tell me about the most under-resourced project you’ve experienced.
• What did you do to overcome it?

Super Power #5 — Resilience

One thing I learned in running a startup is that we rarely get anything right — it makes sense because we are almost always making decisions with very little to no information. But, the good news is that if we can get one or two things right, we can be very, very successful. The trick is when you make a bad call and fall (95% of the time), you need to get up quickly, dust yourself off and keep moving.

Interview questions:

• Tell me about your biggest challenge in your life. What have you learned? How quickly did you get up?
• How many business scars do you have?

Super Power #6 — Passion

This is probably the most difficult thing to assess. I mean, who is crazy enough to be passionate about fixing retirement? Do they really want to work here? Do they believe in the mission? In fact, many people say they are looking for a “meaningful” job that helps people. How authentic, how deep those desires matters a lot.

Interview questions:

• What are you are most passionate about?
• How long have you been passionate about this? What have you done for it?

I realize these super powers aren’t for everyone. In fact, this is a hard way to live!

But, if you are crazy enough to believe that you can “make the change you want to see in the world” and have the co-creator super powers, read about ForUsAll in the New York Times and then give me a shout. We’re hiring.

Originally published at blog.forusall.com on August 12, 2016.