Cameron Herold argues that to build a strong company culture you should hire people who naturally seek belonging—those high in affiliation (e.g., scouts, sports teams, fraternities/sororities, church groups). He cites College Pro and quotes Herb Kelleher of Southwest Airlines: the company hires happy people, and culture is best created by recruiting people whose DNA includes group affiliation and pride.
Chapters
Hire people that want to belong. Hire people that are high in affiliation, the people that are a part of groups and have been their entire lives. Hire guys and women who have been part of scouting, part of their church, youth groups, part of sports teams, parts of, you know, tribes, parts of fraternities and sororities. Anybody who wants to belong in a group, they go to, you know, workout classes together, hiit classes together. They go to festivals together. Those are people that are going to show up at your company events and or going to want to belong versus the rugged individual who really does everything on their own. They're not going to wear that company logo. They're not going to beat their chest. They're not going to be kind of shouting about the company culture as much. So that's secret. Number one is hire people that want to be like that. I realized that we'd already been doing that at College Pro. Those were the kind of the DNA of the people we recruited. They asked Herb Kelleher, the founder of Southwest Airlines one time, how do you get all your people to be so happy? Said we hired happy people. So if you want to create a great company culture, hire people. That culture is part of their normal DNA, that being a part of a group that they're proud of and that they want other people to join as part of their DNA.
