What’s your organization’s culture?
“The Culture is changing!! It wasn’t the same earlier!”
This is a statement most of you, who have been in a growing company have heard. But what does culture even mean and how do I know what is my company’s culture?
Schein breaks down organization culture into 3 components; Artifacts ( What you see? ), Values ( What they preach?) and Assumptions (What deeper values and behaviors, they don’t even realize they believe in and tend to do)
I happened to hear an interesting anecdote from a business function that usually isn’t one that you’d consider when thinking about your organization’s culture. However, I hypothesize that if you analyze just this function in your organization and you as an employee gauge your approach towards interacting with this function you will be in a better position to classify your culture in Schneider’s categorization as show below.
Back to this mysterious function whose identity you are now getting restless to get to know. You probably didn’t guess it! Well, it’s your friendly recruitment team! I want you to start thinking about your interactions with the recruitment team and your state of mind while you interacted with a representative of this team.
Let’s get back to Schnieder’s culture model where I’ll elaborate on different kinds of cultures by taking you through typical interactions people have with the recruitment team. I warn you, you will see yourself in one of these examples.
In a predominantly Control Driven Culture where predictability and efficiency are of the utmost and highest regard, the interviews would get scheduled in your calendar and you would just have to do it. You don’t particularly have much of a say in this matter and don’t tend to question why it needs to be in the middle of lunch break at 1:15 pm, well that’s just when you need to do it!
In a Competence Driven Culture, where deep expertise and excellence in one’s craft are truly valued, the quickest way for you to feel like a legend is by being relentless in your pursuit of excellence in your core craft. Most smart folks around you seem to have this ambitious motive too. You tend to not care too much about anything else that doesn’t directly help you get much better at your core craft. So clearly, recruitment efforts are just another distraction that keeps you away from focusing on getter better at your craft and being a legend. So you dismiss the team and snug their every attempt to get you trapped in a recruitment interview or drive. Folks from ‘The Firm’, this is you! Folks from high end specialized IT and niche Finance consulting companies, this is mostly you too!
In a Collaboration Driven Culture, everyone appreciates that working together is the only way to go ahead. You believe that diversity of thought and seamless integration of functions is an advantage to succeed as a business. Here, you more often than not understand that recruitment helps your org grow; your team grow and helps your growth too. Your recruitment contributions are valued and appreciated by the company. In more people focused companies, the more focus the company has on people, employees tend to take pride in doing interviews.
In a Cultivation Driven Culture, everyone truly believes that the best way to reach your true limits as a collective is to hear and fulfill your true self-actualization. Only when you create an environment where everyone helps each other reach this ultimate psychological need of self-actualization is when you have succeeded. This is truly, a soulful company. You may see glimpses of this once in a while in your organization, but only a few companies more often than not religious institutions and non-profits fall in this higher purpose, bigger mission driven culture. Most companies can only strive to get here. Recruitment is driven and sometimes even owned completely by employees in these cultures.
All you have to do now is think about your thoughts & behaviors the most recent time a recruiter approached you and I assure you, you’ll know what your company’s predominant culture is?
Agree or disagree. I’d love to hear your thoughts.
PS: Based on your current reality you may see the company through a different lens than the majority of the employees tend to. Do think about your colleagues’ reactions to recruitment as a whole and you are likely to find your company in one of these quadrants.