While most new hires are required to meet both job qualification and cultural fit, pressure from the Board causes HR turns the blind eye for cultural fit when it comes to recruiting senior executives, many of whom demand further exception when their first course of action once hired is to bring in their own direct reports from previous companies. This leads to friction between networked new hires and legacy staff and eliminates opportunities for promotion for legacy staff.
Because cultural fit is not a requirement for senior leadership, executives butt heads in battles of power struggle and finger-pointing. Colleagues in liaison roles like project managers and business partners get torn apart from receiving contrasting direction from different leaders. Some direct results:
• Turnover is extremely high on all levels, and nearly all departments restructure frequently every 2 years or so. There is heavy loss of knowledge transfer, and new leaders often end up trying to reinvent the wheel.
• Failure of leadership to operate as one cohesive unit leads to the formation of numerous silos across the organization. I’ve seen teams where colleagues are empowered and encouraged to develop their roles, and others where the manager openly tells the team they were not hired to think on their own.
• Employee programs/perks rolled out and announced in internal memos get disavowed by new leaders unfamiliar with existing processes, and immediately cease to exist without further notice.
• Core values, something that should never change, get refreshed as part of the wave of new initiatives from new leadership.
• When confronted about the fallout ranging from topics like poor communication to departmental layoffs of long-time 10-20 year colleagues, the CEO pleads the fifth and simply says he has to support the decisions of his new leaders.
