Culture, Conformity & Authenticity
Mining operations in the Klondike, c.1899. "Washing out Gold with the Rocker" Alaska and the Klondike, by John Scudder McLain, New York: McClure, Phillips & Co, 1905, p.1, (public domain - Wikimedia Commons)
“But they’re always tired of the things that are, / And they want the strange and new.”
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 Club, 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 Fake
We 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 in Money and Class in America:
“As often as not, corporate success depends upon the aspirant’s willingness, over many years and under a bewildering variety of circumstances, to sacrifice whatever trace elements of personality might get him in trouble with the management or the police. The poor fellow learns to submerge his own being in the corporate being, to subvert his own voice to the institutional voice, to acquire the ‘plastic capability’ that President Nixon so much admired in General Alexander Haig. Only when the candidate has enlisted in the ranks of the Hollow Men does he become eligible for the reward of a tax-deductible personality; only when it is certain that he will have nothing to say does the corporation set him up with a microphone and an audience.”
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:
20 yrs ago, as an investment banker, we held Super Saturdays — an intense day where each recruit had 10-15 interviews with different members of the firm.
We’d assess each candidate’s “culture fit.” Often, many of my top picks were rejected and I didn’t get why, since to me, they demonstrated “fit”: merit, skills, poise, coachability, enthusiasm, etc.
Later, I’d hear, via my male peers, some of the REAL reasons for rejection — as the higher-ups didn’t dare say these to my face:
“We don’t hire fat chicks” (rejected an average-sized woman. She wasn’t “hot” — their words)
“We don’t hire guys with accents” (rejected a Polish guy with an accomplished resume + great personality)
“We don’t hire guys named after pastries” (rejected an Indian guy named Danish)
I shouldn’t have been surprised as they instantly wrote off a recruit at dinner when he ordered an apple martini.
I quickly learned that “culture" was never about merit. It was about conformity.
It was my first job out of college — was told the “old boys club” should be aspiration. At 21, I stayed silent, rationalizing that “this is just how corporate works.” But I could never shake the “ick” feeling when I’d be the only minority in the room, the only woman, often the only one under 50.
It wasn’t until years later, as DEI became a national topic, that I fully grasped what I saw: a system that used “culture fit” as an excuse to exclude talent, all while preaching “meritocracy.”
You can read her entire thread.
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 In
There 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." (From Robert Service: Under the Spell of the Yukon by Enid Mallory).
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,
