👔 Coaching | 🎙️Podcast | ⏱️ Stopwatch | ⏰Off The Clock | & Guild | 📚 BooksAre you making it too hard for people to adapt to your culture? Or perhaps keeping them out because you’ve deemed them a poor fit? Alternatively, if you’re trying to fit in, are you staying true to your values? I’ll be back later this week, with something exclusive for paid subscribers. Here’s your chance:
“But they’re always tired of the things that are, It’s National Poetry month, so where better than in poetry to find some of the raw truths of human nature? Let’s talk a little bit about culture fit. Culture fit is what judgy teenagers are assessing as they silently judge each other. You see it at every lunch table in every high school cafeteria: smart kids sit at this table, cool kids at that one. The jocks in one corner, the theater kids in another. If you’ve ever seen The Breakfast Club¹, you know the various types. When it comes to a work environment, you often hear the old chestnut “Hire for culture, train for skills.” And that’s a helpful rule of thumb for finding the right people. Or is it? Authentically FakeWe spend so much time trying to find the right people to fit into our culture, and once they’re in, we tell leaders they need to be authentic, all while beating the culture into them and ensuring they understand the company line. Lewis Lapham astutely pointed this great grinding down of anything remotely unique and human:²
But what about people who just show up as themselves? People who aren’t trying to fit in, but are simply who they are? Here’s a real-life example from Bian Li, a former investment banker:³
Evidently, appearance and personality are everything. You have to have the right ones before you even have a chance submit to the monoculture. A Man Who Didn’t Fit InThere will always be people who want to go with the flow. And that’s okay. But there are also plenty of people who are looking for alternatives — options that are now plentiful, thanks to advanced technology and occasional advanced thinking that allows for remote or hybrid work situations. Back in Robert W. Service’s day, that wasn’t an option. Service was English, born to a banker in 1874 and seemingly destined for a life of office work. But the future Bard of the Yukon wanted more. He drifted around the west coast of America and Canada, taking and quitting a series of jobs: “Starving in Mexico, residing in a California bordello, farming on Vancouver Island and pursuing unrequited love in Vancouver.”⁴ Inspired by tales of the Klondike gold rush, he found inspiration in the natural beauty and rugged lifestyle of the miners. Never comfortable as a bank clerk, he found his calling in the vein of poetry that he struck in Western Canada. His iconic poems like “The Shooting of Dan McGrew” and “The Cremation of Sam McGee” are still remembered today for their meter, tone, and storytelling. But I think the poem closest to his own nature was “The Men Who Don’t Fit In.” There’s a race of men that don’t fit in, A race that can’t stay still; So they break the hearts of kith and kin, And they roam the world at will. They range the field and they rove the flood, And they climb the mountain's crest; Theirs is the curse of the gypsy blood, And they don't know how to rest. If they just went straight they might go far; They are strong and brave and true; But they're always tired of the things that are, And they want the strange and new. They say: “Could I find my proper groove, What a deep mark I would make!” So they chop and change, and each fresh move Is only a fresh mistake. And each forgets, as he strips and runs With a brilliant, fitful pace, It’s the steady, quiet, plodding ones Who win in the lifelong race. And each forgets that his youth has fled, Forgets that his prime is past, Till he stands one day, with a hope that’s dead, In the glare of the truth at last. He has failed, he has failed; he has missed his chance; He has just done things by half. Life’s been a jolly good joke on him, And now is the time to laugh. Ha, ha! He is one of the Legion Lost; He was never meant to win; He’s a rolling stone, and it’s bred in the bone; He’s a man who won’t fit in. Notice how in that final line don’t has changed to won’t. As if the man is making a choice not to fit in. Choosing not to conform. Does this stand as a cautionary tale of what could happen when we refuse to give in to societal or corporate pressures? Or is it an acknowledgement that some people are just made differently, and this is an ode to forging our own path? Those are questions you need to answer yourself. Meanwhile, consider who you are authentically ― and how your values get celebrated or subsumed in the culture you find yourself a part of. There’s so much to learn,
I’ll be back later this week with an edition only for paid subscribers, complete with recommended timeless & timely links, a podcast, and a book that will keep you thinking. ⌛Don’t miss your chance to get it: become a subscriber to Timeless & Timely. Did you know that if you refer other people, you can get a free membership? The more people you send this way, the quicker and longer you’ll have it. 1 1985 film directed by John Hughes in which five high school students meet in Saturday detention and discover how they have a great deal more in common than they thought. IMDb 2 Money and Class in America : a caustic, and often hilarious, portrait of a segment of the American population who, in the thirty years since the book was originally written, have become only further removed―both in terms of wealth and social awareness―from everyone else. 3 You can read the entire thread. She writes The Regenerative Futurist. 4 Robert Service: Under the Spell of the Yukon by Enid Mallory. Heritage House: 2008 If you upgrade your subscription, you’ll have access to our full archives, plus additional content exclusive to our Ampersand Guild. Because you’re already a subscriber, please accept this discount in appreciation for believing in Timeless values:👔 Coaching | 🎙️Podcast | ⏱️ Stopwatch | ⏰Off The Clock | & Guild | 💡Timeless Reflections | 📚 Books
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Culture, Conformity & Authenticity
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