Match Your Temperament With the Corporate Culture of Prospective Employers

Summary:
Use your network of contacts to find employers who best match your temperament and life style. It could save you time and effort - and put your career on the right track.

Business Personalities

Life Cycle Stages

Your Personality Type

The Importance of Networking

Summary

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Corporate culture is simply the way (in terms of structure and communication, for instance) an organization gets things done. Those "things" are reflected in its priorities, largely determined by the collective values of those with the most power. Corporate culture is the personality of the organization.

Your temperament is also basically your personality. You're different than anyone else in terms of your motives, purposes, values and needs. As a result, you're unique in how you think, perceive, understand and communicate.

So, how do you match your personality with an employer's personality? Most people, I'm willing to wager, do it by trial and error. That leads to job hopping -- which is OK, if you're facile on your feet, have 20-20, can comfortably plug into any corporate information systems structure without adaptive equipment and have the time and money for adventure.

But, if you're a job candidate with a visual impairment, a different tactic may be more productive. Perhaps you find there's nearly always a lag time between starting a new job and getting adaptive equipment and software to work well with a new employer's information systems. As a result, job hopping may not be that much fun for you. Maybe you can spend your time more productively in finding the employer with a long time horizon and a corporate culture which best meshes with your career goal and temperament.

But how do you do that? Here are three rudimentary guidelines for finding an employer that is right for you:

• Learn about the basic "personality" type of business organizations you're targeting
  
  
• Recognize the life cycle stage your targeted business is currently going through
  
  
• Discover your personality type and how well it meshes with your targeted company's personality and life style stage
  
  

Business Personalities

Lester R. Potter, ABC, president of Les Potter Incorporated, an international consultancy, says, in "The Communication Plan," there are basically three types of businesses: defenders, prospectors and innovators/analyzers.

A "defender" organization locates and maintains a secure niche for a narrow range of products or services in a relatively stable market. It has these characteristics:

• High efficiency
  
  
• Low speed of response to changes in the marketplace
  
  
• Jobs organized by functional area
  
  
• Highly centralized
  
  
• Low cross-functional communication
  
  
• High job specialization
  
  

Examples: financial services and the food, paper and auto industries

A defender organization, by its very nature and structure, exhibits two-way but top-down communication designed to change the behavior of its key stakeholder groups but not the behavior of the organization itself. It's general approach is to persuade -- not to achieve win-win outcomes -- in its dealings with employees, suppliers and customers.

A "prospector" organization moves quickly to create new business in a broad product or service sector that changes quite rapidly. It is often marked by:

• Low efficiency
  
  
• High speed of response to changes in the marketplace
  
  
• Jobs organized to serve customers and capture new market segments
  
  
• Highly decentralized
  
  
• High cross-functional communication
  
  
• Low job specialization
  
  

Due to rapid change within these companies, sometimes key functions, such as human resources, do not keep pace with organizational needs.

Examples: Software developers, information technology services and dot com companies.

An "innovator or analyzer" organization pursues an intermediate strategy by maintaining a stable, limited line of products or services but quickly moves to an "offense" position when it sees it can take advantage of promising new developments within a broad sector of its industry. It's characterized by:

• Medium efficiency
  
  
• Medium speed of response to changes in the marketplace
  
  
• Jobs organized to serve customers and capture new market segments
  
  
• Medium centralization
  
  
• Medium cross-functional communication
  
  
• High specialization in established areas of operation; low specialization in emerging areas of operation
  
  

A prospector or analyzer organization is more likely to manage conflict and develop mutual understanding between the company and its key stakeholder groups. It provides forums for each of its publics, listens to the members of each group and, if feasible, modifies its behavior to create winning outcomes for both sides.

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Life Cycle Stages

In addition to having its own "personality," an organization, says the University of Wisconsin Small Business Center, operates within a specific industry that is going through one of these four broad cycles:

• Embryonic - Marked by low cost of entry, a chaotic market, scattered competition and a growing consumer demand.
  
  

Example: VCR industry in the early 1980s.

• Growing - Marked by explosive growth, more sophisticated competition and a more demanding market.
  
  

Example: video stores in the late 1980s.

• Maturing - Marked by more stable growth, high cost of entry, fierce competition and consolidation
  
  
• Declining - Marked by lower profits, increased price competition and fewer but larger players.
  
  

Many times an organization's "personality" is affected by what stage in this life cycle it is currently going through. A "defender" organization, for instance, is more likely to be in a "maturing" or "declining" stage of an industry's life cycle than a "prospector" firm which is experiencing rapid growth.

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Your Personality Type

Here are some very general guidelines about how to identify your personality type and how your personality could mesh with an organization's type and life cycle stage.

You may do well in a focused, traditional, "defender" organization, if you find yourself:

• Saying, "You do it!"
  
  
• Taking on leadership roles
  
  
• Acting decisively
  
  
• Looking at the bottom line
  
  
• Being competitive
  
  
• Dreaming about your ambitions
  
  

An "innovator or analytical" organization may be right for you, if your find yourself:

• Saying, "I did it!"
  
  
• Being organized
  
  
• Paying attention to details
  
  
• Wanting to be efficient
  
  
• Looking at the bottom line
  
  
• Being competitive
  
  
• Dreaming about your ambitions
  
  

You're probably a "nurturer" and can do well in non-traditional, new-breed organizations, if you find yourself:

• Saying, "No problem!"
  
  
• Acting on your gut feeling
  
  
• Working to make sure others feel comfortable
  
  
• Promoting teamwork
  
  
• Helping gain cooperation from others
  
  
• Becoming aware of the feelings of others
  
  

You tend to be creative and could do well in "innovator," fast-growing organizations, if you find yourself:

• Asking, "What if?"
  
  
• Becoming excited about "development," "challenge" and "experimentation"
  
  
• Looking for ways to tap your creativity
  
  

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The Importance of Networking

How do you find out what it's really like to work for a specific company within a particular industry? You network. Talk to employees who work for the organization. Talk to former employees. Conduct informational interviews with key people involved in the departments that interest you most. Talk to the suppliers, consultants and customers of that company. Ask them about the key factors I outline above to identify what distinguishes one type of company from another.

Ask about the communication climate inside the organization. Specifically ask:

• Does the organization have a clear purpose and has that been effectively communicated to each stakeholder group? Is the company focused on a few key ideas?
  
  
• Do employees interact well with one another?
  
  
• Does information move around the organization freely?
  
  
• Do management people practice what they preach?
  
  

The International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) Research Foundation recently found these four factors in the communication climate are most frequently found in organizations the public considers successful.

Keep in mind this feedback may give you a general "feel" for the organization. It will be based on secondary sources. You won't know for sure whether the company is a right fit for you until you start working. But the information you gather will help you make a more informed decision about the employer.

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Summary

Seeking an employer who best matches your temperament and life style is like looking for a good marriage partner. You first need to know yourself and what is important to you before you start making some decisions.

I don't know if there are any short cuts in that process. Finding the right career for yourself is a personal journey no one can travel for you. And it takes time -- time that often takes years. But I sure wish I would have picked up on the defender, prospector and innovator types of corporate cultures when I started building my career 38 years ago. Maybe I would have made some different choices along the way.

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