Wrong Fit, Right Fit: Why How We Work Matters More Than Ever

by André Martin

We are in the midst of a crisis of commitment in the workplace—organizations are searching for engaged employees (“talent”) and employees are looking for a place to thrive. Both are struggling. If we fit, we hum, we connect, we create momentum and produce high-value work with grace and ease. But the wrong fit has serious consequences, including frustration, disengagement, and disruption, which undermines every aspect of daily work and the production of value.



Finding the right fit is hard. Painfully hard. The good news is, there is a way forward. Through his decades of experience and exhaustive research, including intensive interviews with knowledge workers and leaders, Dr. Martin guides talent and organizations to find the right fit. Through easy exercises, clear insights, and personal stories, this book helps readers discover their perfect fit in the workplace. And for employers, Dr. Martin utilizes policies, communications, training, onboarding, role descriptions, and feedback to help them build a new path to worker engagement. Wrong Fit, Right Fit is for both talent and employers who are looking for strong compatibility for mutual success.



Now is the time to boost engagement, inspiration, well-being, and meaning in the work we do. Now is the time to find a greater return in value for ourselves and our organizations. Now is the time to find the right fit.

Genres: Business, Leadership, Management

272 pages, Kindle Edition

Published September 12, 2023

About the author

Librarian Note:
There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.

Reviews

[Kaylee Hansen · Rating 3 out of 5]

DNF
This book was well-written and I enjoyed the insights that it gave, I’m just not sure this book was designed for someone in my shoes. I felt like a lot of the knowledge was sort of common sense. I may pick it back up and read it thoroughly closer to graduation or maybe sometime in the future.

[Hussain Abbas · Rating 3 out of 5]

Very useful read, even if not very pleasant

This book aims to bring to the forefront what most of us already know but hide from ourselves. There are many many reasons for not finding a fit and it is not always about you. Being in a position for 10 years where I have continuously found the “right fit”, this is something that is difficult for me to relate on a personal level. However, I am involved in hiring and onboarding at my organisation (previously, I was directly responsible) and I am able to relate to this from the other side of the table.

This book continuously tries to address this problem from both perspectives: the company’s and the individual’s. Each chapter begins and ends with a real-life story about how someone worked in a place where they did not fit. Throughout the book, the author provides helpful tips from both perspectives in a given scenario.

Further, the book provides frameworks and tools to help us think about finding fit. The book is mostly written for individuals and so there is an entire chapter dedicated to tools that help individuals. I found this very helpful in my conversations with my reports. The book also includes a couple of chapters that help organisations build a better flow that help people finding fit, right from pre-recruitment stages.

Of course, there is no such thing as a perfect fit and the book recognizes that as well. Apart from laying the groundwork for what constitutes an adequate fit, the book also has two chapters that describe “buffers” that help find a good working experience even if there is no perfect fit.

While there are many good things about the book, I hated the fact that the book references individuals as “talent”. Every time I read that word, I felt a jolt of displeasure and that broke my flow. Consequently, there are many elements of the language that similarly diminish an individual experience in the same way. While this may appear to be a small thing, it wasn’t small for me. I would expect a book about finding fit to use more humanizing language than reducing people to “talent”.

[Kent R. Spillner · Rating 4 out of 5]

A timely book about companies and employees learning how to work together

This book is about the ever-changing nature of work, what it means for companies and employees to mesh well, and how to make it easier to mesh together better in the future (or what to do if it obviously isn’t possible).

I’m actually struggling with a “wrong fit” situation in my own work at the moment: my day-to-work is very different from what was described during the interview process, and the things I was supposedly hired to help address continue to be de-prioritized by the business. So I keep being asked to do things outside of my experience and expertise. That could be a great opportunity to learn and grow, but in practice it’s been very frustrating and stressful because there isn’t enough slack on the team for other people to take the time to help bring me up to speed and answer all of my questions. It’s been quite draining emotionally and physically, and really dented my confidence. So this book could have not come out at a better time for me personally, and reading this book has really helped me understand my daily struggles in this job, and has given me a lot of “good for thought” for different ways I can try to improve the situation, how I should try to evaluate improvements over time, and when to know it’s time to throw in the towel and move on (and when I do, it’s also put me in a better position to evaluate potential fit at future companies).

[Chris Austin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved the author's presentation at DevOps Enterprise Summit and pre-ordered this book the day it was announced. It led to a meaningful change in my work environment within the first 50 pages.

This is the book that I took the most notes about (Sooner Safer Happier is the next largest set of notes), and I hit the 20k character cap in Google Keep before tidying.

There were some valuable insights that helped clarify my values, identify areas where I'm experiencing cognitive dissonance, and ways that I can adjust my context to improve my sense of Fit.

It also had useful notes on how organizations can improve the sense of Fit for their employees and candidates, e.g. by increased transparency in their ways of working on job postings and career pages.

I'd give it a five, though it's a somewhat dense read that might lose some people, and I would have preferred to have the exercises split throughout the book instead of having a speed bump early on.

[Nora · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a dense read, but I found several of the "excursions," the Fit Assessment and the notes on-boarding to be very helpful. The author provides great questions that job seekers can use while networking and interviewing. I especially appreciated the questions probing how the company gets work done. Some companies do have difficulties articulating it, and it's important when considering fit.

[Steve Fenton · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is an interesting challenge to how we look at fit. I don't entirely know how I feel about it all yet, except it's highly interesting and will become useful later on when I've internalised it.

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great read and thought provoking. Lots of great ideas overall. Lots to consider and put into practice about how people fit into their environment / company.

[Dino Jurina · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very good introspection book for both companies and employees.

[Carrie · Rating 3 out of 5]

More of a 3 1/2 ⭐️. Lots of interesting thoughts and ideas that I hope to apply to my career.