Aligning with the corporate culture

Yams are important culture symbols if you live on certain Pacific islands. A man on Pohnpei will be praised for his supernatural powers and given an important position for growing a 9-foot yam. On the Trobriand Islands, quantity and qualitynot size-determine status. And even halfway around the world, Western corporations have their own "yams"-things valued for the meaning the culture assigns to them rather than their inherent qualities.

Before signing on with a new company, your chances of survival will be better if you can identify the "yams" and see if you line up with the corporate culture. Ask Kathy Wheeler, who learned a tough lesson in 1992 when she left HewlettPackard for Apple Computer. Hewlett prized collaboration, consensus seeking, and engineering ability-all areas in which Wheeler excelled. Apple, however, valued those who were bold marketers of its products, a role in which Wheeler did not fit. Deeply unhappy, Wheeler returned to Hewlett 14 months later.

How do you figure out a corporation's culture? Look at the people who thrive at the company and learn what personality traits they share, says Jennifer Chatman with the University of California at Berkeley's Haas School of Business. Chatman discovered in a study of accounting firms that new employees whose personalities matched their firms' cultures were about 20 percent less likely to leave than employees who did not mesh.

Other steps can help you ferret out a company's shared values. Check for published reports on various firms by Wet Feet Press (www.wetfeet.com) and Vault Reports (www.vaultreports.com), which sell dossiers geared to job applicants. When you visit a company, look at how work spaces are arranged, how employees dress, and what they are doing. And interview people at all levels in any department where you'll be expected to spend significant time.

From Matt Siegel,"The Perils of Culture Conflict Fortune, November 9,1998, pp. 257-258, 262.

Copyright Catholic Health Association of the United States Jan/Feb 1999
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