From executive roles to board seats: Finding your culture fit
Start-up founders intrinsically know that being patient is right up there with being honest and being courageous enough to take the difficult decisions in business. When hiring for start-ups, these qualities are most tested to choose a team. Determining a culture fit might be the most important decision you take for your start-up. Making a great team, from execs to board members, is often picking the unexpected candidates. Scaling up the leadership right at the outset should help you impactfully solidify your company culture. It is also incumbent on the founder to understand that a square peg will not fit a round hole, and vice versa. Even if you have a great rapport with someone, it may not sound well in the main symphony of the works. It is also about recognizing people who are genuinely interested in the success of others and take interest in the holistic growth of the company, with the right belief.
What is a culture fit?
The mission statement of your endeavour drives the culture organically and supports employee transparency and the underlying layer of work culture is established. They are more likely to be satisfied, engaged, and less likely to leave.
Creating your culture
A talented bunch won’t matter much until they are willing to work with each other, which takes patience more than skill or talent and experience. Identifying your value system, set up a work system that fulfils in terms of projects, clear communication, access to leadership, and transparent organizational goals. Allow ideas to flow freely and respect your team’s time with the freedom to choose their own deadlines to stimulate productivity. Considerate work-life balance and recognition that is tangible for personal development, sets the context for the type of lifestyle people associated with you will lead. Diverse hiring allows different perspectives to converge, giving way to just as diverse opportunities of growth.
Non-negotiables when making the hire
· Personal values and the style of work dictates most people, which should align with the company and the requirement of the role for which you are hiring. No matter what position you offer, understanding their track record with the positives and negatives of business is pertinent.
· If one does not express genuine intellectual involvement in the job to be done, might be great at it yet fall short of the passion that a start-up needs to be nurtured with. Passion is a powerful force that wakes one in the morning and helps take on the new day.
· Those who can help you form a collaborative infrastructure and conflict, improve operations manifold with rationality induced in decision making. Look for the signs of a leader in them and study their motivations and the challenges they are looking for.
· Before the culture fit, comes the team fit. It is very easy to bypass this part, but it is crucial for the team to be able to trust each other and come together in times of crisis and success.
· A thorough background check is usually met with scepticism. An honest conversation on the previous positions held, mistakes made, and the experience gained there, is a sign of depth and analytical reflection. This also indicates a willingness to grow if they are happy to unpack it for you.
· An analytical person always knows one thing if nothing else, there is always a plan. The people who always work ahead of the deadlines make space for learning the ways and works of your organisation. This allows them to act responsibly and respond with an understanding of the metrics. This gives them a chance to hit all the collaborative touchpoints without folding under pressure.
Forming the A-Team
Quality conversation and a strength in conviction can build a solid foundation for work relationships without the sticky doubt in one’s mind if it’ll work out. It not only brings confidence and a sense of experiment to the table but also a focus on the topics worth the time spent on them. Your focus on hiring the best people must depend on growing the business and not saving a dollar today because the hire you make, will make that one dollar grow to ten.
