Rigid on Culture, Flexible on Tactics

Reposting an internally authored blog by George, our Head of Product

I recently had an exchange with another leader in which we were debating whether or not a particular candidate’s behavior during the interview process disqualified their candidacy (for their org). 

I told this person that if they were in the Product team pipeline we would’ve immediately disqualified the candidate. The response I got was, “If it were my call, I would end it here,” which was followed by, “[But] my inclination is to leave [name] the space… to make a mistake and learn from it.” In other words, the leader’s inclination was to lean away from exerting their opinion on shaping the team’s culture through hiring, and to lean towards giving a member of their team the room to learn. 

This is a laudable end goal, but the methods are misguided.

Specifically, my ask is that we be rigid on culture and flexible on tactics. Great companies exude clarity about who they are, their operating principles, and the traits of successful team members. And they don’t compromise. 

The output of “rigid on culture” for a given team lives on a spectrum from the relatively obvious (“no brilliant jerks”) to the less obvious (“if you don’t like the idea of writing regularly, you shouldn’t be here”). When we are clear about how we operate, we remove ambiguity on how to attack the work and allow our team members to move as fast as possible. The leader has four levers to achieve that level of clarity: 1) frequently repeating oneself (in writing and verbally) when it comes to how we should work, 2) displaying those behaviors themselves, 3) choosing what to reward and what to punish, and 4) successfully assessing those traits in the interview process. That last lever is most relevant to the anecdote shared here. When you bring a team member on board who does not fit the team culture, you run the risk of slowing your team down. Depending on that team member’s ability to accrue influence, they can quickly sow doubt. As the leader it’s important to prevent this from happening in the first place and then take action if you see it.

Rigidity in culture sets the team up for success when it’s coupled with flexibility in tactics. That flexibility manifests itself in many ways, with examples including the willingness to test and sunset rituals, experiment with changes in org structure, and implement ideas that, while you might disagree with the end state, have strong logical underpinnings. 

Framed differently, this notion of selective rigidity allows you as the leader to both delineate clear bounds, as well as create room for your team to tackle customer problems as fast as they can. That’s what I’m hoping we can achieve.