Aquariums & Teams
My partnership with Human Resources in hiring teams was a model of ‘you catch em, and I’ll clean em’.
Then I learned about aquariums.
I have a friend with an amazing salt water aquarium. Working on it for years, his ecosystem includes crabs, exotic fish, snails, eels, live coral, anemones.
If I wanted a tank like his I couldn’t buy it. Even If I bought every identical animal and brought them together, my ecosystem would collapse. His was built carefully; considering and introducing each creature over time. He doesn’t want a fish that will eat all the others, nor does he want others to eat the new. He has all kinds of tricks and techniques when introducing new players into his ecosystem, to keep them and it healthy; it's more than the sum of it’s parts.
People brought into your team are not transformed into your culture. Every new hire changes subtly changes your ecosystem. We all live and work off each other. It is important to carefully consider and cultivate every new hire to evolve your culture the way you (and the team ) want. Your culture becomes more than the sum of its parts.
Ultimately this becomes a competitive edge. Like Kevin Casson's tank, no one can ‘buy your ecosystem off the shelf’. They have to craft it over time, while you evolve.
Original Linkedin Post: http://bit.ly/2DdqHxq