Transcriber: Helena Bowen
Reviewer: Denise RQ Sometimes, when I think about fit,
I think about Gandhi. Yeah, that's right, Gandhi. I'll bet when I say Gandhi
that you're probably imagining this little old man wearing
round glasses and a loincloth, sitting on the floor in India,
spinning a wheel. But actually, when Gandhi was a young man, he was this hard-charging
human rights attorney in South Africa. It wasn't until he was in his mid-40s
that he began to realize that this life he was living
was a bad fit for him. He knew he was doing the right work, but he was doing it in this environment
where he couldn't be effective. So, he traded in his suit for a loincloth,
went back to India, and found his fit. It was then that he accomplished
tremendous things. He changed the world,
and the truth is so can you, because that is the power of fit. So, what is fit? Fit is when two things come together. We usually think about fit
in terms of clothes or shoes, but I want to talk with you
about fit in terms of work, which I think is one
of the most compelling aspects of fit. Fit with work is critical, because work is where most of us
will spend the vast majority of our lives. Think about that for a minute. Think about all the time
you spend at work, all the time you spend
talking about work, thinking about work. If you don't fit your work, you are missing out
on a huge portion of your life. So, what does it look like
to fit your work? Well, it's when your values
and the company's values fit. It's when your personality and the personalities
of the people that you work with fit. It's when the way you communicate and the way others
communicate with you fit. When you don't have fit, work and life can be
incredibly frustrating and exhausting. But when you do have fit, work and life
tend to be inspiring and invigorating. I mean, don't you want
to sign up for that right now? That's what I want
to talk with you about: the idea of fit at work and what it can do
for individuals, for each of us. Let me tell you
about my own relationship to fit. Back in 1997, I had
my bachelor's degree in hand, and I was applying
to PhD programs in clinical psychology. I was choosing between two schools:
UCLA, number one in the country, and the University of Denver,
a great school with a program I loved. Now, I knew that DU
was probably a better fit for me, but frankly, I was completely dazzled by the fact
that I’ve been accepted by UCLA. So, off I went to Southern California. At first, it was great. I was surrounded by all these incredibly
intelligent people and big ideas, but it didn't take long
before I began to realize that just something wasn't quite right. You see, UCLA had this incredibly
research-focused environment, and I was realizing that I wanted
to be a strong clinician. But at first I did not trust my instincts, in large part because I had people
saying things to me like, "Are you crazy? If you leave UCLA,
you will ruin your career," and "When you get out of here,
you'll have it made. It's only five more years." But I knew that I didn't fit and that I had to make a change
despite all of those risks. So, I packed up my car and drove
across Death Valley to the Rocky Mountains where I spent the next five years at DU. From day one, I knew
that I was in the right place, that I fit. In fact that was my first experience
of the tremendous power of fit. Little did I realize
at the time that soon, I would focus my whole career
on that topic. After I got my PhD, I worked as a business
psychologist for nearly a decade, helping senior leaders
and boards of directors and investors choose executives
that fit their companies. I loved my work. I got to experience the power and the impact
of analyzing fit on a daily basis. But I also often got really frustrated, because the only people
who were able to evaluate fit were those who could
hire expensive consultants. One day, I got a call from Brent Daily,
who had heard about my work. He told me
he and his partner, Tim Walters, were developing this new technology. It was a software platform designed to analyze fit
between employees and organizations. There it was, finally, a way to democratize
this process of evaluating fit by merging psychology and technology. I was actually so inspired
by their mission that I jumped on board. For the past three years, we've been helping companies
hire, develop, and engage their people in alignment with
their unique company culture. Alright, so why is fit important? Well, the way we're growing
companies isn't working. According to recent
organizational research, nearly half of all new hires fail
within 18 months, and 89% of those failures have
nothing to do with skills and abilities, which is the main piece
we typically look at when hiring. These employees are failing because they don't fit with the company,
the team, or the manager. According to Amy Kristof-Brown, who is one of the academic experts
most focused on this topic, this concept of fit at work has been
in the organizational literature for over 100 years. She conducted a meta-analysis
of 172 person-environment fit studies, and she concluded this: the better an individual
fits their work environment, the more satisfied
and more productive they'll be. That's the basic concept
of person-environment fit. So, what does mean to fit
your work environment? The core of the fit puzzle
that I believe is most compelling is fit with company culture. To sum up a ton of research, we know now that organizations'
cultures are created or developed by the employees from the bottom up,
not the top down. Why? We have decades of personality research to demonstrate that our personalities,
the core of who we are, are actually pretty hard-wired
by the time we reach adulthood. It's those values that drive our behavior
on a day-to-day basis everywhere, including the work place. There's the official company culture
that's usually posted on the lobby wall, and then there's
the actually company culture, the way a company really functions
on a day-to-day basis, and that's determined by the individual
values held by each employee. It's fit with that actual company culture that predicts whether
an employee will thrive. This is not just feel-good stuff. Culture fit is not just nice to have. When employees fit their organizations, they are more productive,
more effective, and they stay longer, all of which we know contribute directly to the financial performance
of organizations. In fact, Jim Collins, in "Good to Great", found that organizations
whose employees were culturally aligned were six times more profitable
than their competition, so culture fit is good for everyone. It's good for companies,
it's definitely good for the bottom line, it's good for each of us. So now, I want you to think
about your own life. Think about all the places
in your life that you have fit and now, think about all the places
in your life where you don't have fit. I want you to think
about how you could change that. Make a decision about
how to make a change in your life, either in a big way or in a small way, so that it's more aligned
with your values, with who you are. Sure, it is definitely a risk
to make a change, but I think it's a much greater risk
to stay where you don't fit, because when you fit,
you can accomplish tremendous things. The power of fit can revolutionize
the way we work. It can transform all of our lives, and it could, just possibly,
change the world. Thank you. (Applause)
