With shareholder pressure on the rise since early October, many companies will be looking to hire skilled, experienced individuals to improve productivity quickly.
Those new employees, however, often bring baggage from prior jobs that can negate the benefits of their prior experience, according to new Wharton research.
According to the paper, “Habits, routines, and scripts that contribute to performance in one organizational context may detract from performance in a different organizational context.”
If you have a strong culture and a clear strategy in doing things that differ from your competitor, you may want to think carefully about whether you want to hire for experience or whether you want to hire people with less experience and invest more in training them in your model.
Mind you this is difficult if you need a ready-now CEO or VP, so coping strategies are required.
The research also looked at “cultural fit” within the organization. For employees who felt they fit into the culture of the firm, the negative effects of prior experience in the occupation are not as pronounced. For employees who said they did not fit well into the organization, there was a significant indication of the negative effect of prior “baggage.”
We also know from experience that adaptable individuals are more productive in new situations.
I have four suggestions to mitigate the negative effects of the trouble people have transferring the way they think about how the new job gets done.
1. Screen candidates for cultural fit.
2. Look for past behaviours indicating adaptability.
3. Add a ‘socialization’ feature to onboarding.
4. Measure and track the new leader’s adjustment.
An important addendum is to recognize that this approach is very important in the hiring or promotion of young leaders. You don’t want to fundamentally change them (and lose some of the benefits of taking on new perspectives) as much as you want them better aligned with your strategy.