There was an interesting discussion in the latest epidode of the Tactics for Tech Leadership podcast. The episode was on the topic of Demystifying Corporate Culture. Given that Andy (one of the hosts) and I had studied Culture-Driven Team Building in 2017, I was very interested to hear how his thinking had evolved over the years.
Andy and Mon-Chaio went on to discuss hiring for cultural fit. I loved the discussion about the danger of hiring for people who are the same (leading to monoculture and group-think). Rather, hiring for consistent values is important.
What values matter. Andy discussed going down to two major values: high collaboration (the ability to work closely with other people on a problem), and a bias towards scientific thinking (that is, using feedback loops to iterate towards a goal). Mon-Chaio threw in another value: customer focus.
As someone who is currently hiring, these three values really resonated with how I think about the people I’m interviewing. I didn’t use the framing of “scientific thinking” myself, but rather I’m looking for people who are comfortable with ambiguity, and work towards goals without clear answers. This turns out to be really important in areas where we are building products that don’t have exact requirements. We can’t tell developers up-front exactly what we’re going to build, because we don’t actually know yet. The ability to lean into the ambiguity and explore options is key.
The three values together provide a really healthy way of working as a team to narrow in on solving customer needs using feedback loops – the core of agile teams.
In summary, the values that matter are:
- Preference for high collaboration
- Work through ambiguity
- Focused on customer outcomes
What do you think? What values are important to you?
Renaissance Developer 