Stop hiring for culture fit. Start hiring for culture add.

Let's be honest about what "culture fit" usually means in practice: people we'd grab a coffee with. People who remind us of ourselves. People who won't disagree in the room.

That's not culture. That's cloning — and it quietly caps how far your team can think.

The teams that scale well flip the question. Instead of "will this person blend in?", they ask "what does this person add that we don't already have?" A different lens on the market. A different way of breaking down problems. A different definition of quality.

Practically, that means writing scorecards around values and behaviours, not vibes. It means structured interviews where every candidate gets the same shot. And it means being brutally clear on the difference between "shares our principles" and "looks like us on paper."

Hire people who share your principles and challenge your defaults. That's the whole trick.