Once, way back when I was someone else's employee and enthusiastically exchanged my soul for wild returns like 'a regular salary' and 'someone actually paying me to take a break and/or be ill', I interviewed for a role at a consultancy that I honestly can't remember the name or purpose of now.

I've been through a lot of interviews in my time, on both sides of the table, and, whilst the name of that business is lost to the sands of time (a.k.a I'm 40 now and I can't accurately tell you what I did even yesterday let alone years ago), their interview process has stuck with me - and sadly not for the best reasons.

I remember it because of all the damn "chemistry" and "culture" hoops they made me jump through.

A solid 70% of the interview process was "checking to see if we gelled" and I remember thinking at the time that it was a bit wild to spend that much time seeing if we'd be pals when very little of the interview process focussed on what I'd actually be working on and what results they'd actually want me to deliver.

When you're building and running a small company, it's a given that you're going to be spending a somewhat unholy amount of time with the people that you're working with (Will even has me in his phone favourites. Nobody tell him that I don't have him in mine......) and it's understandable in an interview process to want to dig down into whether or not you're going to get along with your team.

Forgive my side step into a little reductio ad absurdum, but there's a big, and crucial, difference between "This person will ignore their responsibilities whilst microwaving fish popcorn on the daily and insisting on scheduling meetings at 4pm on a Friday" and "This person isn't enough like me in every way, shape, and form, regardless of capacity to do the job that's really needed".

Unfortunately, a lot of culture-fit sense-checks are testing for the latter over the former.

So here's my plea: before you make your next hire, take the time to think about the difference between "alignment with our operating values" and "a natural bias towards affinity that's skewing our decision-making" and please, please, please put enough time into thinking about the "quantitative fit" of the individual (are they clear on what the job is and able to do it to the standard we need?) before even starting to think about the "culture" one.

Let's unpick it all and figure out some clear steps to get you a hiring plan that delivers what you actually need - not what feels familiar and comfortable.

Quants are better than quals, even when you're hiring for culture fit

Quick question (no pressure, but there is a right answer) - do you want people who mirror you or people who challenge you?

Building a business is hard work - it's, truly, not that complicated, but it's a hard bloody slog to get anywhere. And when things are hard, it's easy to default to what you know, to what's comfortable and safe and gives you a sense of peace amongst the stress of balancing all the competing demands of your company. It makes sense that you'd want to surround yourself with people who feel familiar, people with whom your brain can rest for a moment.

But, please, save that for your social life.

In all the different phases of building a business, the best results will be found in working with people who challenge you - who encourage you to test your assumptions and push past your unconscious bias to build something that the market really needs at a price that it can get comfortable with.

A functional business isn't built on personality, it's built on performance, so what you want to be focussing on in your hiring plan isn't "culture fit", it's "quantitative fit" and it's "behavioural alignment".

Hiring for "quantitative fit" - Inputs, Outputs, and Outcomes

When a founder makes a bad hire, it's almost always a failure of clarity. The easiest way to properly assess a candidate's genuine ability to contribute positively to the growth of your company is to measure them against an objective system.

To be really useful, this performance assessment system should be split into three measurable parts: Inputs, Outputs, and Outcomes.

"Inputs" is another word for your Tasks; business growth is the big goal at the end of the journey and you only make it there by completing a million little things that all roll up to contribute to the whole. Inputs are the efforts that you’re putting into the business by taking single, small steps, day-by-day, to work towards the completion of your bigger pieces of work.

Those bigger pieces of work are your Projects or "Outputs" - the features you want to release or the services you want to scope out and price up. Think here about all the bigger things that are the combined result of your small steps and are designed to make the numbers move.

Those numbers are your "Outcomes", also known as your Objectives and Key Results (OKRs). They’re the quantitative results that you hope to see once you’ve completed your Projects - the outcome of all your hard work.

When you're thinking about measuring performance of an existing employee or predicting performance of a potential future one, you need to determine:

1. Did they/will they do the things that were asked of them? (Are they taking accountability for their part in the whole on a daily basis?)

2. Did those small, every day things they did roll up to build the right things (or will they)? (How effectively do their day-to-day actions translate into larger deliverables?)

3. Did those things that they built move the numbers that needed moving (or will they)? (How good are they at choosing the right focus areas to help the business grow?)

Where you weight the value of each of these things will depend on the seniority of the person you're hiring.

For example, an interview for junior individual contributor needs to focus more on their ability to deliver on Inputs that build Outputs more than it does on the impact of those Outputs on the Outcomes - simply because they're less likely to be or have been responsible for choosing the pieces of work that push the big numbers in the right direction than a more senior person would be.

Regardless of the seniority of the role, the aim is the same - finding and hiring the people who you objectively believe will help you move the numbers.

Should you even bother with a culture fit interview?

It's really all about how you're defining "culture".

If I have two candidates in line for a job and both can, objectively, complete the role, but one is rude and the other polite, it's understandable that I'd want to hire the polite one.

But that's not because of "culture fit".

In any functioning company, the willingness to collaborate and act professionally is not a pleasant bonus to get from an employee, it's a non-negotiable operational requirement of every single role.

Look at the structure of your business as laid out in our Strategy framework: your grand Mission Statement is broken down into Objectives (Outcomes), which are driven by Projects (Outputs), which are executed via Tasks (Inputs). This system is the circulatory system of your business.

Any behaviour that impedes the flow of the circulation, like a lack of respect, an unwillingness to communicate clearly, or a failure to uphold deadlines, is not a cultural incompatibility, it's an operational failure. Your success hinges on every single person understanding their role as an essential part of a larger, complex mechanism.

Instead of screening for "culture fit" try thinking about this part of the interviewing process as checking for 'behavioural alignment'. You're not checking whether someone seems like everyone else in the team, but for the objective manifestation of the values necessary to execute your strategy effectively, such as:

1. Accountability: does this person show a commitment to ownership over their Tasks and Projects.

2. Clear communication: does this person have the ability to provide objective, unambiguous updates necessary for managing Performance (Inputs, Outputs, Outcomes).

3. Respect for process: does this person recognise the fact that their work interfaces with the work of others, meaning deadlines and quality standards are commitments to the team, not just to themselves.

You might think it's a case of semantics, this differentiation between "culture fit" and "behavioural alignment" and, well, it is. Dismissing something as "semantics" is under-appreciating the impact that language has on us.

The term "culture" in a business context carries tough connotations of conformity rather than competency, which can can disproportionately disadvantage minorities and, ultimately, drive the kind of group think that does not lead to adequately serving your customers.

"Behavioural alignment", on the other hand, is a way to quantitatively assess something that's typically been perceived as qualitative in nature. And we love quantitative assessments.

Putting this all into practice

If you want to start assessing quantitative fit and behavioural alignment in your interview processes, here are some questions to add to your interviews.

Quantitative fit

1. Inputs: "Tell me about a daily or weekly Task that was crucial to your team’s success. When you encountered a blocker that threatened its deadline, what was the very next specific action you took to ensure accountability and maintain progress?"

   
   

2. Outputs: "Walk me through a large, complex Project you recently led. What was the objective definition of success for that Project, and what numerical progress updates did you provide to stakeholders, and how often?"

   
   

3. Outcomes: "Describe a time you were handed a new Objective. How did you break that goal down into more manageable parts?"

Behavioural alignment

1. Respect for the group's needs: "Describe a team decision regarding a workflow or tool you fundamentally disagreed with. How did you handle your disagreement while still ensuring you followed the new process to deliver your committed work (Tasks/Inputs)?"

   
   

2. Respect for good communication: "Tell me about a time you had to deliver difficult feedback (e.g., a Project/Output was late or incorrect) to a peer or manager. How did you structure the conversation to focus entirely on the objective data/metrics and avoid subjective language or blame?"

   
   

3. Respect for accountability in collaboration: "Give an example of a time your Project's success depended heavily on a deliverable from another person, and they missed their deadline. How did you adjust your own work plan and communicate the ripple effect on your overall Outcomes without taking ownership of their mistake?"

With all that in mind, what do you think? Will you be testing for "cultural fit" in your next hire?

If you want to chat further about anything you've read here or want to explore how we can help you implement these frameworks into your own company, feel free to give me a shout:

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