Tip of the Spear Ventures

A Family Office that behaves like Venture Capital | Private Equity | Business Consulting

Sam Palazzolo, Managing Director

Mergers and Acquisitions: Avoiding Culture Clash – 3 Tips!

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The Point: For a successful mergers and acquisitions event to take place, there typically is an avalanche of financial figure reviews/due diligence (actual, forecast, and delta explanations from both buy-side and sell-side). But we asked ourselves here at Tip of the Spear Ventures, is there more to consider than meets the financial eye? What happens when one organization’s culture is in apparent direct conflict with that of the other organization? So in this post, we examine the mergers and acquisitions topic of avoiding culture clash along with 3 tips… Enjoy!

Mergers and Acquisitions Avoiding Culture Clash 3 Tips

Mergers Create Value and Synergies (Don’t They?)

In today’s highly competitive new economy, where global industry heavyweights fight for market share, mergers and acquisitions (along with joint ventures) appear to be a logical outcome for those looking to be here to stay. Most markets across the globe (even in local communities) provide for three primary providers of products/services. Creating economies of scope and scale while establishing global brands. Or do they?

According to an M&A Harvard Business Review report, 70-90 percent of all mergers and acquisitions fail. So at some point after a merger or acquisition, somehow/someway these once promising “new” organizations that were great on paper failed in practice. So what went wrong?

Culture: The Dominant Barrier to M&A Success?

Blocking the success path for many of these mergers and acquisitions (don’t forget joint ventures too!) is what could be considered a dominant barrier with the name culture. Let’s define culture as the implicit values, beliefs and assumptions that influence behaviors of those employed in an organization. While you may not be able to see culture spelled out, you certainly can see it being played out in the daily interactions amongst an organization’s stakeholders.

So what can leaders at the helm of mergers and acquisitions do to minimize the impact disruptive company cultures can have on success? What follows are 3 tips to assist leaders of mergers and acquisitions in avoiding culture clash:

Tip #3 – Leave Your Egos at the Door

Aggressive and arrogant can be used to describe some company cultures, especially those doing the acquiring in M&A transactions. Typically thought of as “weak” and “gobbled-up” are organizations that get acquired. However, cooperation and promised synergies rarely materialize if both organizations cannot put aside their egos in order for the overall common good to take place.

Tip #2 – Recognize New Cultural Marketing Opportunities

Isn’t business funny, and the leader actions that take place in M&A? While some pretty bright people put together months worth of financial analysis, the marketing that represents the culture of the new entity is rarely recognized nor given consideration for change. On top of this lack of marketing recognition of the new brand, continuing on in a “if it worked then, it will work now” methodology has proven fatal. Recognize new cultural marketing opportunities as two become one.

Tip #1 – Failing + Failing Rarely = Success

When two failing organizations go through an M&A, rarely do we see success be the result. With the old adage of “desperate people do desperate acts” we see two failing organizations combining heading on purposeful path towards future failure. Examples prevail from button-down vs. khakis and engineering vs. sales based cultures not playing well with each other in mergers and acquisitions.

SUMMARY

The Mergers and Acquisitions landscape is a complicated one, full of financial due diligence playing itself out. However, the financial figures alone cannot help in avoiding culture clash. In this post we’ve explore M&A – Avoiding Culture Clash and provided 3 tips to help leaders achieve greater success.

 

Sam Palazzolo

Leading at the Tip of the Spear Lunch Offer

 

The Leadership Challenge: Recruiting Top Talent – 4 Tips!

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The Point: At Tip of the Spear we know that the best strategic plans and the best processes often come-up far short of potential. Why? Regardless of the strategic plan or the processes in place in the corporate workplace today, if you don’t have the talent to execute both with precision, you’ll fail – And it all begins/ends with how you go about recruiting top talent! So in this post, we’ll explore the leadership challenge of recruiting top talent and provide 4 tips for success… Enjoy!

The Leadership Challenge Recruiting Top Talent 4 Tips

People, Processes and Pay plans… Oh My!

Have you ever heard of the “top” talent? The most important part of every business is leadership, followed closely by the talent they employ. While it might take more than 50 days to hire and activate talent who could fill up organizational positions, your staffing can also be an exciting journey. Building a company might mean finding a way to attract top talent sourced from a global candidate pool. Typically, the “top” talent already has employment. So how will you effectively not only identify but convince them to stop working where they’re at and start working for you where you’re at? Consider the following tips in winning the recruiting game for top talent:

Tip #4 – Win the Recruiting Top Talent Game

Once you consider the orthodox method of hiring, you are likely to shoot yourself in the foot. Change it up with your job description. For example, consider a creative way of hiring. If you want to net high-end or top talent, then your job posting needs to stand out from the crowd. While thinking of an ingenious way of hiring, you should consider adding a competitive salary. In that way, you are matching the value of the applicant with your offer for the job.

Tip #3 – Putting Extraneous Information Away for Top Talent Generation

More than that, put all extraneous information about your company away. Do not include anything that is not relevant about the opening and your company in your vacancy posting. Precision and creating perfects bullets for requirements and benefits of the job are a way of attracting top talent.

Tip #2 – SEO Strategies for Top Talent Recruiting

What SEO plans have you deployed for such openings before? Your Internal SEO experts on your digital marketing team could assist in identifying and incorporating search words, or tags that to drive the talent you are looking for towards you. In LinkedIn’s recent updates, there is a search functionality for both employers and job seekers and Google’s new AI-powered jobs search engine, effective SEO incorporation in job postings is important to get your job posting in front of the high-end or top talent with the skills and experiences your organization demands.

Tip #1 – Forgetting How Long It Takes to Hire

Hiring the perfect top talent can be long time-wise, but rewarding financially. Top talent are always defining the pace of business. Finding a perfect candidate for your business or company might be time-consuming. It might take several weeks/months before you find the perfect superstar. However, no matter how long it takes, most times, the time is worth it.

SUMMARY

In this post we’ve explored the topic “The Leadership Challenge: Recruiting Top Talent – 4 Tips!” It’s important to note that while strategic plans and processes are important to business success, there is little that leadership can do to achieve such success without the right talent on staff (And at the core of that people equation is Leadership!)

Sam Palazzolo

Leading at the Tip of the Spear Lunch Offer

Avoiding Epic Failure With Your Leadership Strategy – 6 Tips!

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The Point: As a leader, you probably believe that your thoughts lead to good strategies which lead to great execution and ensuing results. So we started thinking here at Tip of the Spear Ventures, what happens in those foundational leadership strategy moments where your thoughts aren’t as good as you think they are? Will you be able to clearly share with your stakeholders the vision of where you’re going? Will you be able to achieve optimum desired results? In this post we explore the topic of avoiding epic failure with your leadership strategy and provide 6 tips to do so… Enjoy!

Avoiding Epic Failure With Your Leadership Strategy 6 Tips

Leadership Strategy

Take a look at last year, and zoom into last month (perhaps even last week!) What went well for you/your stakeholders/your organization from a leadership strategy perspective? When you analyze the key performance indicators (or metrics to manage with), you probably recognize superior results (Greater revenue, optimal efficiency, appropriate expense control structures in place, etc.) Conduct an autopsy of these results and you will inevitably explore the leadership strategy that went into making them happen. Plans were drafted, goals were set, communication efforts conducted, implementation/execution moments occurred, and performance metrics measured.

So if leadership strategy takes place within your organization, just like it does within organizations all over the globe, why then do some strategies work while others fail? After all, it would appear that the business landscape is simply littered with strategies that have failed… and the reasons for epic failure can be just as prolific in quantity!

Avoiding Epic Failure with Leadership Strategy – 6 Tips!

So what exactly causes all of these epic failures in leadership strategy? What follows are 6 tips to consider when developing/executing leadership strategy: 

Tip #6 – Market Research

What will the market bear? If there is no problem, there is no need for a solution. In other words, conducting market research into what exactly the problems are, the scope/scale of them will lead to indications (projections?) of approximately how big of a problem there is for you/your stakeholders/your organization to solve. Market research not only helps identify scope/scale of problem, but also the context in which applied solution can be applied.

Tip #5 – Stakeholder Alignment

What if you conduct market research for your leadership strategy, only to have no one fall in line to support the initiative through implementation/execution? Having a strategy in and of itself will not guarantee successful results. Stakeholders not only need to have alignment for the initiative, but need to actually buy-in to the leadership strategy. While not every strategy requires maximum “skin in the game” for stakeholders, there does need to be consensus support for the leadership strategy.

Tip #4 – Accountability

Time and again we see otherwise brilliant leadership strategy achieve epic failure when accountability to results is not maintained. Consider it your #1 priority as a leader! Without holding stakeholder’s feet to the fire there can be no optimum results returned (PERIOD!)

Tip #3 – Beliefs/Opinions

We worked with a leader that would begin just about every conversation with the mantra “I believe…” or “My opinion is…” and the leadership strategy that he attempted to employ more times than not was unsuccessful. Why? He simply held a set of beliefs and opinions that were not shared with those around him (or more to the point realistic). Less beliefs/opinions and more facts would have served him/his stakeholders better.

Tip #2 – EQ over IQ

I’ve been fortunate to serve many a talented leader, where the majority of that talent was in the form of brainpower. However, some of the most intelligent people that I worked with also wouldn’t come out of the rain in a downpour! These same leaders were so out of touch with their emotional intelligence that they simply couldn’t/wouldn’t be able to trust their instincts. If your head tells you to “go” but your gut tells you “no go” you should probably listen to your gut (That is assuming you can hear your gut in the first place!)

Tip #1 – A/B Test + Contingency Plan

Las Vegas is a town filled with successful casinos, not successful gamblers. The reason why the airport here has 10x the quantity of flights compared with most other airports domestically in the USA is that everyone wants to come here to try their luck, and sooner or later they need to go back home. Typically this return home occurs after a loss in the casinos! Leadership strategy should be looked at as a Marketing A/B Test, or at the least with contingency plans in place. No need to put all your eggs in one basket, let’s divide them into two baskets and for goodness sake let’s plan for what might happen along the way!

SUMMARY

I love reading/seeing success play itself out firsthand as a result of leadership strategy just as much as the next leader (Even when it comes from one of our competitors!) In my mind, success breeds success. In this post, we explored avoiding epic failure with your leadership strategy as well as 6 tips to assist you in your leadership journey. Once you’ve tried one (or all six out), please take a minute and drop me a line letting me know how you did… I’ll wait to hear from you/your success!

Sam Palazzolo

Leading at the Tip of the Spear Lunch Offer

The Leadership Challenge: Indifference – 3 Tips!

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The Point: We all want leaders to lead with their “skin” so to speak in the game. Leaders that are so vested in the outcome of the operation that “whatever it takes” is not only the organizational motto, but performance measuring stick for what’s the desired result achieved (and if not, why not?) But what if your leadership team, or you, are not leading by example with such effort/energy? What if you aren’t doing your part to accomplish goals? In this post, we’ll explore the leadership challenge of indifference and provide 3 tips to help you make a difference… Enjoy!

The Leadership Challenge: Indifference – 3 Tips!

I Believe That We Can Win – Banishing Indifference!

At Tip of the Spear Ventures and our private equity holding operations, we’re fortunate to see many leaders in action (and just as many leadership styles). For example, Jim is one of the platform leaders that excels. He is a leader that sets goals, accomplishes goals, sets new goals, accomplishes new goals, and on and on. Quick to provide credit for his team, his leadership style prompts those around him to excel in their own rights as well. He is truly making a difference, and cultivating future leaders for other platform opportunities with us.

We met Mark as a result of a consulting engagement in Tip of the Spear Ventures Sales / Business Development offering. Mark was quick to share “I believe that we can win!” with us during our initial meeting. But it became relatively clear quickly that Mark truly believed that he alone (“I”) would be doing the winning. Unable to engage his team in worthwhile activities, he was truly attempting to get victories where he could alone. However, an interesting point presented itself when victory was not at hand… Mark took on an air of indifference and several times sabotaged the initiatives so that if he couldn’t win, no one would!

Call Indifference Lackadaisical

While we’d love to compare and contrast the leadership styles of Jim and Mark in autopsy fashion, we don’t need to dig too deep to find the primary cause of initiative and goal death… Indifference! Indifference is defined as having a lack of interest, concern or sympathy. Indifference can also be seen as sharing unimportance for a given topic/event. Regardless of how you define indifference, ask yourself if this is what you want within your organization, your leadership team, or yourself? I’m betting that answer to all three is no (or should be!)

3 Tips to Overcome the Leadership Challenge of Indifference

Here then are 3 tips to help you overcome the leadership challenge indifference in your daily performance:

Tip #3 – Set the Course

I see so many leaders that behave in an indifference pattern because they simply are not setting the course for them to accomplish bigger/better goals. For example, if you want your performance year-over-year to be at 120%, then you’d better aim for 133% (Aim high and achieve it… Bonus! Reality might have you miss though, but hopefully still coming in above 120%)

Tip #2 – Execute

Setting goals and plans to execute in and of themselves are not enough… You have to execute! I see far to many strategy sessions dissolve into nothing getting done afterwards. It’s as if those that strategize cannot roll up their sleeves and actually do the work. No one ever said that was a great strategy and got results. Execute, execute, execute!

Tip #1 – Accountability

So you have the plan and the ability to execute, but will you hold stakeholders accountable for achieving results? If you can’t hold people accountable, and more importantly re-orient them to get back on track towards achieving goal, you have no way of achieving success (Please don’t argue with me that even blind-squirrels find nuts… Is that the business model you’re willing to follow?)

SUMMARY

In this post we’ve explored the leadership challenge of indifference, as well as provided 3 tips to help you as a leader succeed. No one ever said leadership was a game that wouldn’t require focus, effort and energy. I see way too much political-correctness and leaders playing nice without wanting to go after their goals. Indifference is the kiss of death when it comes to leadership, so leave that out of your leader success equation!

 

Sam Palazzolo

 

M&A: The New Rules of Mergers and Acquisition – 5 Tips!

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The Point: Considering mergers and acquisition is the general counsel of the company that has an advantage to identifying the players who will form his team in advance. Lawyers have a big role to play in M & A transactions, in which if it’s done badly it could be lower the value rather than to be high.

M&A The New Rules of Mergers and Acquisition 5 Tips!

5 Tips (or Rules) to Follow for Successful Mergers and Acquisitions

Often essential for a company’s revenue column, mergers and acquisitions must be done in the right way. Here are five rules to be verified for your mergers and acquisitions activity:

Tip #5: Establish a dedicated transaction team before even targeting one

The timeline for completing a merger or acquisition is often very tight. The firms that will be used, the market specializes in transactions between listed companies and Legal services to reduce costs and since more and more transactions are cross-border, it is a good idea for a head of legal build relationships with colleagues around the world.

Tip #4: Pay special attention to regulatory the issues

In the new rules of merger and acquisition once should pay the special attention to regulatory the issues. Rarely does a merger stumble because of a regulatory barrier, but if you wait too long before you evaluate that risk, it’s bad. The experts are unanimous: Advocates-General must ensure that no one in-house is committing a blunder causing a regulatory incident.

Tip #3: It is also necessary to have a team that will integrate the companies

If it is not necessary to put the cart before the oxen and operate as a single entity before having flattened all the obstacles, it is nevertheless necessary to foresee its blows in advance. A team is therefore responsible for identifying the departments whose operations will be merged and which departments will not be merged.

Tip #2: Do not be afraid to say no

Mergers and acquisition transactions are relationships that grow and require companies to redefine themselves. If the transaction risks losing value rather than creating it, it may be better to retreat.

The fact is that the teams negotiating the transaction are so focused on the realization of the deal that they sometimes do not have the necessary distance to notice the problems that arise during due diligence. These problems are sometimes manageable by changing some of the terms of the initial agreement, but they are sometimes too important to ignore.

Tip #1: Take lessons from each transaction

The more we make, the better we are especially if you take the time to take stock after each transaction. What worked well? What were the problems? Why? This provides equipment for creating lists of things to check during the next transaction. And one avoids repeating the errors.

SUMMARY

In this post, we’ve explored mergers and acquisitions and what I consider to be the new rules of therein that can provide detailed information and new phases to consider along with 5 tips (or rules). Success often comes from repeating successful processes, but can also come from conducting autopsies of failed activities.

Sam Palazzolo

PS – If you or your organization are challenged as a result of M&A activity, please don’t hesitate to drop me a line and request future post titles! Here are a few of the other M&A titles previously published/in the works:

– Will Your M&A be a Success of Failure?

– The Importance of a M&A Strategic Plan – 3 Tips!

– Mergers & Acquisitions – Six Diversification Questions

– M&A: Is Leadership Transparency the Key to Success? – 6 Tips!

– How to Successfully Survive Mergers & Acquisitions

– M&A: Creating Shareholder Value

– M&A: Should You Go For Stock or Cash?