Culture Fit vs. Culture Add: Striking the Right Balance in Leadership Hiring
When companies talk about hiring for “culture,” the conversation is often oversimplified. Too many searches focus only on whether a leader will “fit in.” But for growth companies, the real challenge is balancing culture fit with culture add.
Why This Matters
Culture isn’t static, it’s a living system that reflects both how your team works today and what it needs to become tomorrow. The leaders you hire will either reinforce what’s already there or help shift it toward the future. The right balance between fit and add is what drives growth.
Ignore fit, and you risk friction that slows execution and erodes trust.
Ignore add, and you risk building a leadership team that’s comfortable but stagnant.
Culture Fit: The Foundation
Culture fit isn’t about hiring people who all look or think the same. It’s about alignment with the ingrained ways of working that define your company:
How decisions get made
How communication flows
What behaviors get rewarded
Leaders who push too hard against these foundations, too fast, often fail to gain traction. Even if they’re technically excellent, the tension they create within the existing team will limit buy-in and progress.
Culture Add: The Catalyst
Culture add is about bringing in what’s missing: new practices, perspectives, and disciplines that stretch the organization toward its next stage. Great leaders evolve culture by introducing fresh ideas and building systems that strengthen the business for the long term. They bring the cultural components that will shift the teams mindset to capitalize on future opportunities.
In growth companies, this often looks like:
Professionalizing systems without losing agility
Expanding executive perspective with diverse experience
Challenging old ways of working when they limit scale
Encouraging innovation and new ideas when the market is shifting.
The Balance Growth Companies Need
For scaling businesses, the question should centre around how much of each (fit or add) do we need right now?
In moments of rapid change or stalled growth, you may need a leader who adds more than they fit.
In moments of stability or cultural rebuilding, fit may take priority.
The most effective hires do both: they respect the foundation you’ve built, while also stretching the organization and it’s people in key ways that will allow them to reach new goals and transform strategy.
Broadview’s Perspective
At Broadview, we don’t reduce culture to a buzzword. Our search and assessment process digs into both fit and add:
Mapping a company’s ingrained cultural drivers (decision-making, communication, reward systems).
Identifying the gaps that need to be filled for the next stage of growth.
Assessing leaders not only for alignment, but also for their ability to challenge and elevate.
How We Assess Candidates
We consider many characteristics, behaviours and experiences to evaluate leadership capability, cultural alignment, and potential to add horsepower to our clients growth goals:
Traits – How a leader’s adaptability, conscientiousness, and stability align with the way your organization operates.
Motivation & Drive – Whether their career arc and energy match the stage of growth your company is in.
Behaviour & Communication – How clearly they express ideas, calibrate for different audiences, and handle conflict.
Culture Fit vs. Culture Add – The operating conditions where they thrive, and the fresh perspectives they bring that can push the organization forward.
This balance of fit and add is what allows us to connect clients with leaders who deliver today and successfully position them for growth tomorrow.