Page 119 - Successful Onboarding

108 • Successful Onboarding

will not only understand a cultural norm, but also assimilate and believe
in its wisdom if they can understand an underlying rationale for its exis-
tence. When Netflix’s CEO provides productivity data about work, he isn’t
just teaching organizational values, he’s going out of his way to explain the
wisdom of the values. That is how you get buy-in.
In advising specificity, we emphasize that firms need to be smart. You
cannot dump everything about an organizational culture on new hires all
at once, which is another reason why programs should unfold over an
entire year after a new hire comes onboard. Just as important, the onboard-
ing designer has to figure out which elements of culture are important to
understand, and which ones new hires can figure out on their own. It
might not be as important to teach new hires about expense reimburse-
ments in detail, since they will learn it naturally and it is quite honestly
not all that significant. Yet it would be important to explain to new hires
how people in the organizational culture are used to receiving criticism
or negative feedback. In designing a cultural component to onboarding,
managers need to identify and prioritize the mission critical components
of culture. Let’s ask ourselves, if we really want to move the needle on our
organization, what cultural knowledge will help us do that?
Here is an approach that we like to use when developing messaging for
new hires. Instead of using phrases like “We’re great because…,” use phrases
like “We’re at our best when….” Telling people why we are great does little
to acknowledge limits or weaknesses in our organizational cultures. Instead,
it causes a skeptical workforce (we hire smart, inquisitive people after all,
right?) to question the credibility of the statements. It also does nothing to
challenge the new hires. The company is apparently already “great,” and as
a result is seemingly not striving to become anything else beyond what it
already is. By contrast, “We’re at our best when …” conveys that the com-
pany can achieve strong performance, but there are also times when the orga-
nizational culture does not work so well. It is a humbler and more realistic
statement, and on that account, a more inspiring one. As a caveat to what
we’ve been advising, companies can be inspirational, so long as they do not
go too far. As part of this exercise, try creating some pairs of contrasting “We’re
great because …” and “We’re at our best when” statements for your organi-
zation. Try to make the “We’re at our best when …” list as specific and
descriptive as possible. Here are some contrasting statements we’ve created
for an aerospace and defense firm and a consumer electronics company.