“Culture fit” isn’t always a buzzword.
At formalwear rental company The Black Tux, the talent and people team developed their valued skills matrix, an internal tool that evaluates technical and cultural competencies among current and future employees. Using the framework, TBT hiring managers evaluate qualities like impact, curiosity, precision and ownership in each potential hire. The tool is also used for career development conversations, determining compensation rates and for providing ongoing, specific feedback to employees.
Relying on the skills matrix during interviews is just one way TBT is intentional with its company culture, according to Chief People Officer Mallory Snyder. All team members align their actions with the company’s mission of “owning the moment,” and they’ve even created a culture book that reflects all of the people who make up the company, in detail. Today, it serves as a reference point for employees and team leaders when they need to refocus.
“As we’ve grown, it became clear that in order for us to foster a culture that best reflects our values, we have to be more intentional,” Snyder said.
But don’t confuse “culture fit” with an umbrella term that represents people employees think they could get along with, as has been the case in many American startups. TBT is looking for subject-matter experts that align with The Black Tux mission.
“We use a rubric, specific examples and thoughtful feedback to help us make the right decision,” Snyder said.
While The Black Tux’s culture book hasn’t necessarily made tough decisions easier, it’s made the team more confident in making them.
How was The Black Tux’s company culture created?
Our culture wasn’t defined for the first four years of the business. We decided to create a culture book that brought clarity around what we valued and how we wanted to work together. The culture book was a collective effort by many team members, led by executive leadership.
Culture is people. It’s created by the people we hire. We have a set of values and behaviors that we believe in and use to help us make decisions. Our team works at it every day.
Our culture and culture book is not a list of rules. It’s a set of best-observed practices that will allow us to evolve and improve as we scale the business. It’s the real way we interact with each other.
You’ve been with the company for the last four years and have seen it scale through a $30 million Series C raise in 2018. How has the company culture evolved alongside its growth?
As we grew, it became clear that in order for us to foster a culture that best reflects our values, we had to be more intentional. We needed to put our culture into words and be more explicit about what matters to us at work.
We’ve also had to learn to let go of people who weren’t a good fit for the company anymore. They were the right fit in the early days for the work we needed to accomplish, but over the years we’d have to scale the business and hire subject-matter experts.
Hiring for us is not about speed and quickly filling roles. It’s about taking the time to hire candidates who are not just experts in their fields, but who also add something to the culture we’ve defined and want to actively contribute to enhancing the culture we have built.
The culture book as it is now is a reflection of all the people who make up our company, in detail.’’
What has been the biggest challenge that the company has faced in maintaining its culture?
When times are really tough or we’re missing a big goal, making decisions that align with our beliefs and values becomes more challenging. When under stress, it can be hard to put aside your first instinctual reaction and your ego. It’s also those moments when living by our culture and values matters the most. When times are tough, we remind ourselves to put in the effort to refocus on what we set out to do and align ourselves with our company’s mission and values.
What’s the story behind the culture book?
Before our culture book, we thought we had a good idea of what we felt was important to the culture of TBT. We were all living a culture that was unique to us. The difficulty began when new people joined the team or challenges arose in the day-to-day that made communicating, making decisions or deciding on a hire more challenging.
We knew that in order for our culture and values to scale, we needed to be more intentional by putting those ideas and values into words. The culture book as it is now is a reflection of all the people who make up our company, in detail. And it serves as a reference point for us when we need to refocus.
Share an instance in which a team member embodied your company culture.
Our CMO started out as an MBA intern. He was one of our first employees. He wrote the fit algorithm that we still use today. Eventually, he ended up joining full time, running the growth team.
Our CMO is someone who cares about much more than his immediate role in the company. He’s curious about exploring new ideas in his own field, but also takes time to explore ideas that might make our culture better as a whole.
He is the reason we ended up creating the skills matrix, a tool we use every day. He read about the concept and did some research about how it might work for the company on his own time. His job isn’t researching and championing career development tools, but he cares about our culture enough to put in extra effort to help us innovate and further our culture.
I’ve gone to him countless times for advice on culture projects. He’s one of those people who is always innovative, insightful and curious.
Tell us about your skills matrix. How does your company use it?
It’s an internal tool that evaluates technical and cultural competencies. It is used to evaluate employee skills and ensure they’re on a continuous path toward growth. We use it for career development conversations, to determine compensation rates and for giving ongoing, specific feedback.
There are eight employee competencies across nine progressive levels. It’s a nonlinear scale. We’re not robots. Someone could be more competent in some skills than others, and our skills matrix reflects that. For example, a team member could be showing very strong skills in emotional intelligence and perform lower in ownership. The skills matrix calls this out and gives that person a clear idea of what they need to work on to get to the next level.
Someone could be more competent in some skills than others, and our skills matrix reflects that.’’
You place an emphasis on maintaining company culture during the hiring process. How do you ensure you’re bringing in candidates that embody the culture of The Black Tux?
We ask employees to be prepared for each interview with a list of questions that will gauge candidates both technically and culturally.
For each role, employees ask the same set of questions to each of the candidates they interview to remove any bias in the process. We have a list of culture interview questions that includes a rubric for positive, neutral and negative answers.
We then rate candidates on culture on a 1-5 scale, with one point for each cultural action of The Black Tux. Our feedback is specific and backed by real, thoughtful examples from the interview.
We don’t use “culture fit” as a catch-all for people we think we could get along with. When we are talking about a candidate’s potential fit for our company, we use a rubric, specific examples and thoughtful feedback to help us make the right decision.
What makes the culture at Black Tux’s unique? Are there any special cultural traditions, resources or practices at the company?
Culture is a part of everything we do at TBT. Any time we’re hosting an event or starting a new training, we make sure it emphasizes something that we value culturally. We also keep an annual calendar of family-friendly, women-focused and volunteer-based activities.
Instead of just stating what our cultural values are, we try to incorporate these values in our everyday business, including our hiring, firing, promotion and recognition decisions. We call out the reason behind those decisions and explain how it relates to our culture.
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