Culture can be difficult to describe until someone new joins the business. It shows up in how decisions really get made and how much autonomy leaders have, as well as in the way trust is built. In an established fresh produce business, culture can also be shaped by years of working relationships and ways of operating that have developed for good reason.
That makes culture fit an important part of any executive fresh produce search. A candidate can have the experience to do the job and still find that the environment they're joining works very differently from the businesses where they've succeeded before. For employers, the challenge is getting enough of that culture out into the open to assess fit properly.
Culture is personal in established fresh produce businesses
Some of the strongest cultures can also be the hardest to explain. An established business may have clear values and a formal organisation chart, while much of its day-to-day culture has developed naturally over time. People know who needs to be involved in a decision and where there is room to act independently. New ideas may be welcomed, although credibility and trust can take time to build.
These dynamics can be particularly pronounced in family-owned businesses. Research into family enterprises shows how closely family and business culture can become connected. Authority doesn't necessarily follow the reporting lines, and relationships can carry a history that someone coming from outside the business won't immediately understand. And while family businesses often place significant importance on culture, they also recognise that it may need to evolve as the business grows.
Fresh produce adds its own context. Seasonality and long-standing supplier and customer relationships can influence how a business works, alongside the operational realities of the sector. A new senior leader needs to understand that context as well as the role itself.
Look beyond a candidate’s track record
By the final stages of an executive search, you may be choosing between several credible candidates. Their CVs tell you what they've achieved, but understanding culture fit means looking more closely at how they achieved it and the environments in which they've been successful.
That includes understanding what motivates someone and how they tend to make decisions. The level of authority they're accustomed to having is useful to understand too.
There isn't one leadership style that will work everywhere. A leader who is comfortable acting quickly on their own judgement may thrive in one business, while another may be better suited to an environment where decisions are built through agreement. Understanding those differences gives you much more to work with than experience alone.
Be clear about change and continuity
Bringing a new senior leader into an established business usually means you want something to change. The business may be growing or preparing for its next stage, and the incoming leader is expected to bring something the organisation needs for what comes next.
There will also be parts of the business you don't want a new leader to change. In family-owned businesses especially, that can include elements of the culture that are closely tied to the company's history and identity. An external leader can bring new ideas into the business, but how much freedom they have to put those ideas into practice will influence what they can actually change.
This is why the brief needs to go beyond “we want someone to bring change”. Where is change wanted, and what already works? The brief also needs to be clear about how much freedom the new leader will have to decide what that change looks like in practice. Candidates need a clear understanding of those expectations during the search.
Assess culture fit properly
Culture fit becomes risky when it means little more than “we liked them”. Personal chemistry and familiarity can both make a candidate feel right, without telling you enough about how that person will operate once they're in the role.
A more useful assessment starts with understanding the culture of the business itself. How are decisions actually made, and what does good leadership look like here? Where does influence sit within the organisation? Once you can answer those questions, you have a much clearer basis for exploring how a candidate has operated in previous environments and the conditions in which they've done their best work.
It's also important that this doesn't become a search for people who think and behave like the existing team. When cultural fit is poorly defined, it can favour familiarity and narrow the range of people considered suitable. The aim is to understand the environment someone will be joining and whether their way of working will allow them to succeed within it.
What senior fresh produce candidates learn about your culture
Cultural fit is being assessed on both sides of a senior search. While you're building an understanding of how a candidate might operate within your business, they're forming their own impression of the environment they could be joining.
The search process gives them some of their earliest evidence. The speed of decision-making can give a candidate clues about how the business operates more widely, while the communication they receive helps shape their impression of how people work together. They'll also be comparing what they experience during the search with what they've been told about the culture.
This can be particularly important for senior leaders. They're considering the responsibilities of the role alongside the environment in which they'll be expected to deliver them. How the search is handled becomes part of their experience of the culture and can influence their view of the opportunity.
The cost of getting culture fit wrong
A cultural mismatch doesn't necessarily mean that either the business or the individual lacks capability. Two successful ways of working can simply be difficult to reconcile within the same environment.
At senior level, that misalignment can have consequences beyond the individual appointment. A leader may find it difficult to build the trust or influence they need to deliver what was expected of them, while the business may become frustrated that change isn't happening in the way it anticipated. If expectations around leadership, culture and ways of working are explored properly during the search, both sides have a clearer basis for deciding whether the appointment is right.
Make culture part of the search
Assessing culture properly starts with being able to describe how the business actually works. Formal values can be part of that picture, alongside the day-to-day reality of how people operate and what senior leadership looks like in practice.
That understanding can then inform the conversations you have with candidates about how they work and the environments in which they've been successful. It gives both the business and the candidate a clearer picture of what the appointment would involve and where their expectations or ways of working may differ.
At LCR International, cultural fit forms part of our executive search approach alongside psychometric assessment and behavioural profiling. These tools help us build a fuller understanding of the person behind the experience and how they could operate within the business they're considering joining.
If you're preparing to make a senior appointment in fresh produce and want to discuss how cultural fit should form part of the search, get in touch with the LCR team.
