• There are organizations in which style is definitely valued over substance.
• There are organizations in which substance is definitely valued over style.
• There are organizations in which people wander around in Birkenstocks and call each other “dude.”
• There are organizations in which employees are expected to call superiors “Mister” and “Ms.”
• There are organizations in which employees need to make appointments with superiors before speaking with them.
• There are organizations in which supervisors chew tobacco in the office and during meetings.
• There are organizations that value your having strong family connections more than your work ability.
• There are organizations that are extremely secretive with their employees.
• There are organizations that believe everyone who puts in a solid effort over the course of six or seven years should be promoted.
• There are organizations in which employees work around thirty hours per week, which is considered a good effort.
• There are organizations in which employees are hired and are then almost universally encouraged to leave after five or six years of service.
• There are organizations that have been collapsing for years, but that portray themselves to employees as strong and secure.

I could go on and on. Suffice it to say, however, that your success and happiness in your career may have more to do with your thoughtful and intelligent decision to join an organization that best fits you culturally. People simply want to be around people they like, and when people like each other in the workplace, both sides of the relationship benefit. OBSERVATION:

We all have certainly heard that Albert Einstein flunked out of grade school. Perhaps Einstein was too concerned with the theoretical rather than the practical. Whatever the reason was, Einstein simply did not experience success in the environment he was in at the time because the school and the people in it could not understand or appreciate where he was coming from intellectually. Do the employees in your organization understand where you are coming from? In a business environment, when the employee and the employer see eye to eye, success is far more likely than in situations where they do not.

Employees Often Fail to Give Strong Consideration to Culture When Choosing an Employer.

The problem with the way many employees manage their careers is that when choosing a job, they are motivated primarily by prestige and money, more so than by the cultures of the organizations they are considering. When an employee instead evaluates offers based upon where she believes she fits in the best, that employee is far more likely to find happiness and success in her career. The problem, however, is that most employees simply do not think this way, the reason being that employees are competitive by nature, and “fitting in” is not nearly as easy to quantify as things like money, company cars, and other perks. In almost all respects, it is most difficult to gain the best positions with the largest, most prestigious, and highest-paying employers. Yet, the pressure to join these organizations typically commences while an individual is in school. The problem with this type of thinking is that it can often lead employees to make horrible career decisions. If an employee is always thinking in terms of what he can do to look best to others, he will often neglect what is best for him personally. None of this is to say that there are not numerous advantages to come from being part of a truly significant organization. Nonetheless, this should not be the only consideration on which an employee bases his career choices. OBSERVATION:

Many people, in fact, have subordinated much of their happiness in life in pursuit of money, respect, power, and admiration from their peers. This leads many people to base their entire concept of happiness on things like having the largest house, the most expensive car, and other traditional accoutrements of the American Dream.

Failing to Consider Culture Ends Many Careers Prematurely–Careers That Could Have Otherwise Been Highly Successful.

It is easy to find out an organization’s compensation structure, but this is a simple and superficial distinction to make between organizations. It is not as easy to gauge an organization’s prestige level; however, it is much more difficult to evaluate a organization’s culture and whether that working in that culture will keep you happy over the course of your career. One of the most significant mistakes employees make when evaluating competing offers from organizations is believing that money is the most important factor they should be considering. While money is certainly an important component of any analysis, it is not the most important factor. Making any career decision solely based on money can be a horrible mistake. If you properly assess all variables, including culture, and you choose the right organization, you may have a stable career and life. If you go to an organization just because of monetary considerations, you may wind up so disgruntled that you are eventually not working at all. OBSERVATION:

On a day-to-day basis, in each of our offices, we speak with employees who began their careers with ultraprestigious, high-paying law firms. Many of these attorneys stopped practicing law two to seven years into their careers because they became disillusioned. Most of these lawyers say things like “I would never work in another law firm. I would only work as an in-house attorney.” The résumés of these attorneys are sometimes littered with one firm job after another, where the next and then the next firm were virtually identical in terms of culture to the very first firm that the attorney joined right out of law school. Of course these attorneys are not happy practicing in a law firm. They have only worked for one type of law firm during their entire career. The problem is that these attorneys have worked in a firm culture that was such a bad fit for them that they never got the opportunity to experience practicing law with a group of people they like, respect, and emotionally profit from. Not all law firms are the same. Fitting in with the community of lawyers that make up a particular firm is the key to long-term success and satisfaction in law firm life. Not fitting in is often the key to failure and can even lead to one changing career paths altogether.

Consider the choice of where to live, and compare the process of making that decision with choosing to join any particular firm or organization. Some people prefer the lifestyle in New York to Los Angeles, or prefer San Francisco to Seattle. Preference for one city or neighborhood is entirely personal and individual. The considerations are whether we feel accepted and appreciated in a community and whether we see people around us who share similar goals and aspirations. Whether that community supports and enhances your lifestyle becomes a driving force in your deciding where to live. And, just as you need to feel that you can thrive in the community in which you live, you should feel that you can thrive in the environment in which you work. You should constantly ask yourself these questions: Is this organization a place where I will feel accepted? Will I be surrounded by people with the same values and goals? Will this organization complement my lifestyle? Boiled down, what is the culture of the organization?

Making a Lateral Move Is Your Best Chance to Find Your Perfect Firm Culture

Many of our candidates, when preparing for an interview, want help identifying those questions that will help them unearth the true culture at a firm. In short form, the question that needs to be answered for each lawyer and every employee is simply, “Will I like it at this firm or organization?” Unfortunately, try as we might, we cannot always answer these questions as well as we would like. The culture of a firm may vary from practice group to practice group, and it is impossible to pin down with any meaningful certainty whether or not a good firm is always a good fit. Often, the only way to learn this is to actually go to the interviews and speak with the attorneys or individuals you may be working with. It’s important to remember that the interview process for a lateral move is much different from when a law student interviews for a summer clerkship. This is a plus. Unlike summer associate openings, which can sometimes number in excess of a hundred, when a law firm conducts a lateral search, many candidates are interviewing for one or possibly two available openings. In these situations, the law firm is not as concerned with competing for any one particular candidate. Conversely, when a firm is in a heightened state of competitiveness, it can sometimes be more difficult for the lawyer interviewing for the job to get a sense of whether the particular law firm is comprised of people with whom the lawyer would want to spend the rest of his or her career. But this is the kind of firm you should be seeking. Keep your best interests at heart, and do everything you possibly can to ensure that you find a good fit. Obviously, your task is to get the job; however, you also need to understand the firm’s culture. At BCG we have identified several ways in which you can evaluate whether a particular firm is right for you. Preparation Is the First Key to Evaluating Culture. You’ve gotten an interview. Before the interview, you should research as much as possible to determine the objective factors: How big is the office? What is the salary? In our opinion, this objective fact gathering is helpful in determining how well the firm or organization is doing financially and how it has grown over time. Diversity. It may also be important for you to look at the firm’s or organization’s commitment to diversity. We don’t know of any organization that doesn’t have an antidiscrimination policy. However, some organizations are more proactive in this area than others. Is it important to you that there are employees of color or of various sexual orientations? Location, location, location. Where is the office located? Of all these factors, we find that this tends to be the least important factor in evaluating culture. A California company known for having employees that wear Birkenstock sandals around the office might have a New York office with that same type of atmosphere. However, even in Hawaii or Miami, there are going to be radical distinctions amongst organizations. These distinctions are important. The city makes little difference in regards to the type of culture that exists within the organization. There are laid-back firms and organizations in Chicago that are down the block from offices where you wouldn’t think of entering without wearing your most formal business attire. The key is identifying and understanding the various cultures of the organizations themselves. Governance. How an organization conducts its day-to-day business is important. Employees have to run the business of their organization, and how they choose to structure the organization can say a lot about its culture. The business model often reveals the core values of the organization. Generally, organizations are governed in one of several ways: The democratic organization allows each employee to become involved in the decision making, regarding anything from new hires to compensation to long-term planning. For many organizations, the democracy may only include supervisors, so it is not necessarily realistic that a junior employee will be making high-level management decisions, or even weighing in with an opinion. However, many democratically run organizations do have some level of junior involvement within the organization’s governance, such as on pro bono committees or with respect to summer associate entertaining and recruiting. This type of culture is entirely inclusive, although sometimes it is the result of too much administration bogging down each individual lawyer’s already heavy workload. The values reflected here are participation and integration, which may come at the cost of expediency and/or consistency. Many organizations govern using a small, centralized committee of decision makers, which results in greater consistency, in terms of vision and management. However, this culture is more exclusive in terms of firm governance, which may turn off the young attorney or employee who wants to be a part of the decision making and planning efforts of an organization. In this system of governance, it’s important to find out how the leaders are chosen and the values they hold dear. At the end of the day, however, what is more important than the method of governance is why a particular organization chooses the business model it does. Asking an organization’s superiors why things are the way they are helps define an organization’s culture and vision for the future. If you hear that the goals of the business match yours, you have likely found a culture in which you will succeed and be happy. Word on the Street. You probably know the reputation of the organization where you’re interviewing. Is it known around town as a sweatshop or a quality-of-life organization? BE CAREFUL! Even if a reputation is mostly on target, you could end up joining a practice area or working with a partner that is decidedly unlike the overall firm or business culture. “Lifestyle” and “quality-of-life” are other ways the business community may refer to a certain organization. These terms have become somewhat hackneyed of late, but still have value in terms of defining a particular organization. A quality-of-life organization is fairly self-explanatory, which is to say that the organization has placed a premium on allowing associates to have lives outside of work. What does that mean? Sometimes it means a slightly lower billable-hour requirement than at other firms. Other times it may mean that the firm’s or organization’s management is more amenable to situations other than typical full-time associate positions, including part-time, telecommuting, flex-time, or non-partnership track. The popularity of this term has caused it to be somewhat diluted. Don’t take these types of labels at face value, and investigate what that term means within a particular firm. Again, be careful. Sometimes attorneys and job seekers interviewing for a position swing too far in terms of evaluating. Spending all of your time in this process wondering, “What can the law firm or business do for me?” will prevent you from showing a potential employer that you are a good match for it. This is a two-way street, so showing a law firm or other organization what you are made of is just as important during an interview as evaluating the organization.

Conclusions

The key to true job satisfaction is determining which organization’s culture suits you and your career. Finding the right culture will allow you to find a job that won’t feel like work. What is going to make the difference over time is not a $5,000 per year salary differential but whether or not you feel comfortable and appreciated in a particular environment. No matter what the reputation of the organization is, going through the process of discovering who the people are and what they think of you and your skills will be the best indicators of your potential long-term satisfaction and success. THE LESSON Just an ad for the Career Coaching Club.

• want to understand the forest and not the trees
• believe that the details are not as relevant or important
• prefer to think about the overall situation, not all the details associated with it

Global people will not follow a lot of structure and may describe their day in no specific order when speaking about it. When being given assignments or things to do, global people will mostly be more interested in hearing just a general overview of the work they need to do. In contrast to global people, there are specific people. The specific sort of person typically prefers a lot of details about everything. They like small bits of information and are often not concerned at all with the “big picture.” One of the best attorneys I ever helped find a job turned me into a full-time researcher in the process. He had come out to Los Angeles from a big city on the East Coast to interview with a multitude of law firms over several days. Prior to coming out to L.A., he had sent me a list of at least 50 items that he wanted investigated. These items included things like

• public and private schools in various areas of Los Angeles
• commute times from these areas to areas he might be working in at various times of the day
• male/female ratios in the firms he was considering
• attrition at the firms he was considering
• news stories about the firms, from over the previous two years
• average partner compensation at the firms
• billing rates of the firms
• average age of partners at the firms

This particular attorney was well known and well qualified enough that the odds were pretty good that just about every firm he was interviewing with would be hiring him if he let them. He had taken a week off from work to come out to Los Angeles, and his entire week was action packed. I had picked him up from the airport one late Sunday morning and spent the entire day chauffeuring him around the city to look at various neighborhoods. Although I am not a real estate agent, I had printed up home listings for him in his price range and drove him by several of them. During the five or six hours I was driving him around, he gave me several additional “research assignments” to do for him that evening. After dropping him off at his hotel, I was up until at least 11:30 doing research for him online and faxing all sorts of documents to his hotel room (laptops were not popular then and older people especially preferred faxing information when traveling). For the next several nights, after coming back from interviewing with law firms that day, the attorney would call me and give me additional research to do about the firm he had interviewed with, and I would tell him about the firm he was scheduled to speak with the next day. The number of details that this attorney wanted was so profound that over the next week I spent several hours each evening doing research for him. What was so funny about this particular partner is that he was so interested in various details that by the time his offers started rolling in, he became incredibly critical of each firm–so much so that he completely forgot the very important reason he was moving to Los Angeles (to be closer to his kids, who had just moved there with his ex-wife). In fact, the global reason for moving to Los Angeles became completely overwhelmed by these details, which seemed incredibly insignificant to the big picture: he wanted to see his kids grow up. He became completely overwhelmed and obsessed with so many small details that, even in speaking to him on the phone, I felt like I was going insane trying to piece through the morass of incredibly small minutia that he had deemed relevant to his job search. This is how specific people are, though. They love details and are more concerned with details than the overall picture. Specific people:

• are more interested in the trees than the forest
• believe that the global way of looking at things is shallow, and even a lazy form of thinking
• often cannot understand and/or see the larger picture, in terms of how things work
• are very good at understanding small bits of data and information

People who are very focused on specifics typically provide lots and lots of details when you are speaking with them. In fact, specific people love details, order, and so forth. When you speak with specific people they typically relate information and things to you in an exact order of how they occurred and make sure that they give you lots of details about everything. It is fun sometimes interrupting salespeople who are “specific” in terms of how they sell things, because they are always interested in relating each step of a process to you, and if they are thrown off, they feel like they need to start again. Understanding whether you are a global or specific sort of person is quite relevant to your career. It is important that you are in a position that makes the most of your skill of being either general or specific. If you are a general person, you will be more comfortable with a managerial role, and working in an environment where you are given tasks in such a manner that the “big picture” is explained to you. In addition, you will not want to be given a lot of details and will prefer to be in an environment in which you understand how your tasks are a part of the overall work that the organization is doing. You are unlikely to have a lot of tolerance for being forced to explain all sorts of small details. If you are a specific person, the opposite is true. You will prefer working for a manager who explains tasks to you specifically and with a lot of details. In addition, you will not want generalizations. Instead, you will want to understand the logical sequence in which the work should be done. You will typically require a lot of information before acting on a task and will always want to make sure that you understand specifically how things work, and what you should be doing each step of the way. You are a meticulous person. In my experience, people tend to be either predominantly specific or predominantly global. It is important that you are working in a job and environment that makes the most of your natural inclination. It is also important that you recognize the importance of people who make the most of your skill set. THE LESSON Determine whether you are a global or specific person. Most people are either too general or too specific in the way they treat information, and overly detail-oriented people risk losing sight of the bigger picture. General people are more comfortable in managerial positions, while detail-oriented people prefer everything to conform to a logical sequence. Understand which sort of person you are, and seek work that best harnesses your natural inclination.