Let’s get real about hiring
Too many companies are still obsessed with ‘culture fit’. Sounds progressive, doesn’t it? Modern. Thoughtful.
What they really mean is: will this person look like us, think like us, act like us, drink the same craft beer, and laugh at the same in-jokes?
That’s not culture. That’s cloning. And it’s killing innovation one identical hire at a time.
The best teams aren’t built on sameness. They’re built on productive tension, on respectful challenge, on the kind of friction that sparks better ideas and prevents groupthink.
Walk into most “culture fit” offices and you’ll see the same demographic, the same university backgrounds, the same predictable perspectives. Then wonder why they keep making the same mistakes, missing the same opportunities, and struggling with the same blind spots.
Hiring GenX+ talent isn’t a risk to your culture. It’s a catalyst for fixing what’s broken.
Experience doesn’t mean stuck in the past. It means battle-tested for the future. It means having survived multiple economic cycles, technology transitions, and industry upheavals. It means knowing which hills are worth dying on and which battles you can win.
GenX professionals bring something your graduate hires can’t: perspective. They’ve seen strategies fail and learned why. They’ve watched companies make expensive mistakes and remember the warning signs. They’ve led through crisis and know how to keep teams functioning when everything’s falling apart.
If you want innovation, hire people who see things differently. Who ask uncomfortable questions. Who’ve lived through failure and learned from it. Who won’t just tell you what you want to hear.
Your culture doesn’t need protecting from experience. It needs elevating by it.
The companies getting this right aren’t worried about age diversity disrupting their ping-pong tables and pizza Fridays. They’re focused on results, on wisdom, on the kind of seasoned judgment that only comes from years of making real decisions with real consequences.
That’s how you fix your culture. Not by hiring people who fit your existing mould. But by bringing in people who’ll help you break it and build something stronger