Cornell U on culture and hiring
by Miki SaxonThose of you who’ve been reading my blog know I hold pretty passionate beliefs (dating back over 30 years) about MAP (mindset, attitude, philosophy™) and how it affects company culture, management, staffing, motivation, and all things human. You know my definitions of good MAP and what I consider the hallmarks of good culture, how hiring needs to be a core competency for all managers, and how much culture can affect hiring. But, to be honest, over those years I often felt like a ghost preaching in the face of a hurricane.
The climate first improved when culture was talked about by the media as a real force within companies and highlighted after divestiture (1984) by Charlie Brown’s (unsuccessful) effort to change it at [the original] AT&T. It got another giant boost from Lou Gerstner when he made changing the culture central to IBM’s turn around. Today, culture is pretty much a mainstream topic, although there’s still too little talk about how much it should affect hiring.
So imagine my delight when I read a Cornell University post on Science Blog about research being presented this month that confirms just about everything I’ve been saying all this time.
But in spite of all the research coming down the pike, all the media articles on it’s importance, and all the chatter at parties, too many managers still seem to think that they can somehow implement these things externally, instead of understanding that, for better or worse, to work they must be embedded in the manager’s MAP.