Experience and Skill Set Take a Back Seat to Cultural Fit

Recently came the news that Bill Perez, Nike's CEO, had resigned from the company. Although Mr. Perez arrived with an excellent reputation, having
served as CEO for the family-owned S.C. Johnson & Son, Inc., he was, to
many, a surprising choice for a company with a tradition of hiring from within.
Yet at the time, co-founder and chairman Phil Knight believed Nike would
benefit from the guidance of this "outsider." Thirteen months later, he
changed his mind and promoted a 27-year veteran of Nike.
 
The problem of succession is not unique to Nike. In any company - particularly an owner-founder company such as Nike - it is not easy to bring in an outsider at the senior level. In fact, getting a true partner from the outside is much more of an art than it is a science. To make matters worse, many corporations still fail to take into consideration the "soft" side when considering prospective leaders, thus downplaying the importance of personality and cultural fit.

In short, the Nike situation clearly illustrates what we have long known - that cultural fit is equally important as traditional attributes such as work experience, educational background and skill set.

Every corporate culture has its politics, yet a candidate's ability to thrive or maneuver in that culture is a critical component to job satisfaction and success.

How Do You Determine Cultural Fit? Managing talent - putting the right person in the right job - will always be challenging because humans are complex.

There are two types of assessment that are generally employed during the executive search process. The first is what we call a behaviorally based core competency interview. Most search firms do this, and it is basically sitting down in front of a candidate and interviewing against the key core competencies that have been identified as critical to the role.

But when you really look at why candidates fail in new jobs, it tends not to be that they are technically unqualified but rather, because they are a bad cultural fit. When you conduct an interview in this manner, it gives you a mere snapshot of the individual, making it very difficult to really get an accurate reading of their soft side. Properly conducted references also have their blind spots. Hence, a second form of assessment is emerging, which is designed to get at these so-called "intangible" elements of leadership, cultural fit and emotional intelligence, and provide insights into how individuals behave when the door is closed.

When a traditional core competency interview is combined with this type of assessment, the recruiter gets a more rounded picture of a candidate - and the client gets another significant piece of data to help them minimize the risk in the hire.

Adding Science to Art. Managing people is an art, one that requires attention. No matter how seemingly perfect a business strategy is, it will fail without the talent to execute it.

While very little in our industry is ever guaranteed, one thing is certain: A well-established body of knowledge about human behavior adds a solid dose of "science" to managing talent, which increases the probability of long-range success. Gathering as much specific information as possible during the hiring process will afford corporate leaders greater confidence in their decisions, and should minimize future losses resulting from low productivity, morale and turnover.

Elliot Gordon is a Senior Client Partner with Korn/Ferry International, the world's leading executive search firm. He is in the company's Irvine, CA office and can be contacted at gordone@kornferry.com.