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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

What Are Your 2018 Sales Business Development Resolutions? – 6 Tips!

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The Point: Nothing happens in business until you sell something! If that’s the truth, as we start-off another year here at Tip of the Spear Ventures we asked ourselves “What are we going to see in terms of Sales + Business Development activity that is going to make our goals become reality?” So in this post, we’ll explore 6 tips that we believe will make the difference in your 2018 sales business development resolutions… Enjoy!

What Are Your 2018 Sales Business Development Resolutions 6 Tips

“And they’re off!” the horse track announcer calls across the public address (pa) system. Just like the horse race, so begins another year with all the hoopla/excitement that a new calendar deserves. “This year is going to be different” a leader tells me as we kick-off a new engagement. “How so?” I ask. “We’re going to do things different. Last year, especially as the year drew to a close, I found us as an organization in a ‘rut’ that we couldn’t get out of. We have goals of lead generation, sales acceleration, and next-level business development. So this year we’re going to avoid the ‘rut’ and drive towards accomplishing our sales business development goals.” What follows are the 6 Tips (or goals) that this leader sees as the success tasks for the New Year…

Tip #6 – Two Brains are Better!

You must have heard that two brains are better than one, and this can be a huge asset in Lead Generation. This is the theory that two leaders will provide enough perspective to align towards a better alternative than would have been achieved in/of their own. When a leader goes out in search of a business partner to have stronger and better plans for their small business, sharing information and deciding which way to go often works out for the better. Not only do the brains need to be compatible, but there is a lot more to it. I’m not advocating that leaders with similar brains should align, but often times leaders with differing thoughts can for even greater alignment/future direction. Out of everything else the two partners should be able to drive the business in the best manner together forward.

Tip #5 – Leveraging Technology (Artificial Intelligence – AI)

Can you ever have enough technology when it comes to lead generation, sales acceleration, and next-level business development? Another opportunity to consider in the coming year is adding Alexa (or a virtual assistant) to your workspace. Not only will your schedules be organized/optimized, but you can incorporate Alexa into almost everything you do. From scheduling meetings, managing clients and to-do lists and all those little tasks which you would rather not do because they take a little longer in doing. This type of technology is beneficial in uncountable ways for your sales and business development efforts.

Tip #4 – Cross-Functional Teams

No matter how much technology you have, it still comes down to people in business executing sales acceleration initiatives drafted. So why not adopt cross-functional teams to achieve your goals with less consumption of human energy and having more productive outcomes for your business. The cross-functional teams can prove to be a good support for the business plan when they are competent and collaborate and cooperating at the same time. These teams can handle a big part of your sales acceleration and lead generation.

Tip #3 – Communicate the Sales + Business Development Plan!

So far this year, I’ve had a few disturbing moments when it comes to business leaders and their sales business development plans. The disturbing sales and business development moments come primarily in the form of not wrapping up 2017 aggressively and not having a sales acceleration plan in place for 2018. Now you and I both know that business can be unpredictable, and that best laid plans can become unraveled in a matter of what appears to be moments (especially in sales business development for those leadership members!) But to not finish strong (it’s not a matter of wanting to finish stronger!), often times comes down to not communicating the sales + business development plan to those expected to execute (and don’t get me started on the topic of accountability – a topic for a future post!) Communicating your idea in the best way possible is the key to manage a leading business. Communication serves the longest and healthiest life of a business (As business communications are largely dependent upon the presentations that are delivered to the potential partners or clients). It is very important to have some highly interactive and well explained and professionally created and creative presentations, but the content isn’t enough. You should definitely know the depths of what you want to deliver to the senior partners or clients of your business.

Tip #2 – Learn How to Negotiate

Learning to negotiate in a more effective way for this year is a key to the lifelong learning that I often see as a key to success (Especially when it comes to success in lead generation, sales acceleration, and next-level business development!) There are several tactics that make negotiations easier and more interesting. Being persuasive and being able to deliver your idea more effectively shows the best of a businessman.

Tip #1 – Communicate Up

Keep your senior management team in a constant supply of information and reviews about your business lead generation, sales acceleration, and next-level business development. You should be able to communicate the progress and the hurdles of your business to them. The senior management is able to look and help better when your reviews are honest and accurate. While they might be able to see the details from a metrics perspective, provide the “reasons” why initiatives are on/off-track so that they get the full picture.

SUMMARY

Keep your lead generation, sales acceleration, and next-level business development mission statement in line with your business strategy. Try to incorporate new ideas and keep yourself open to new avenues of technology and management. Just like Alexa, there are so many more technology (Artificial Intelligence – AI) that can make business handling far more easily and manageable. Look into all those options available for you and choose those best according to your needs and requirements.

 

Sam Palazzolo

Leading at the Tip of the Spear Lunch Offer

The Leadership Challenge: Swearing – 1 Tip!

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The Point: We’ve all had those heated moments of leadership where using swear words seems like an appropriate choice. Call it lazy, call it a limited vocabulary, call it an attempt to add “humor” or levity to a situation, hey you can even call it getting your “street cred” in certain situations! But are any of these situations appropriate to swear? Should you breach the line of “in-good-taste” and swear in the workplace? In this post we’ll explore the leadership challenge of swearing and provide 1 tip (Yes, just one)… Enjoy!

The Leadership Challenge Swearing 1 Tip

I Swear, Therefore I am!

Apple’s release of the swearing emoji appears to capstone the era of bad taste. What was once a business climate of professionally dressed stakeholders in an organization, slid to business casual and landed in casual/inappropriate attire (as an organizational leader, does it blow your mind that focus is given to dress code instead of driving revenue generation or shareholder value? It should!)

Following this trend in dress code is the vocabulary that organizational leaders and their stakeholders use. I did some consulting work with an organization recently where all (leaders and stakeholders alike) seemed to employ the continuous use of the F-word expletive. As one leader of the organization shared with me when I inquired as to the F-words prevalence “That’s just our culture here… Think of it as fuel for our engine!”

Swearing… It’s What’s for Breakfast (Lunch and Dinner!)

The essence of swearing is derived from civilization’s back alleys, back countries, and backyard sporting events. If the goal of business is to push forward their initiatives/agendas, then why do so many leaders revert to this backward vocabulary choice?

Now I’m no angel! There have been plenty of times (more than I care to admit) where in a round of golf a mishit ball has caused me to exclaim a few choice words (Yes, Mom… Even the aforementioned F-word!) I’ve even worked for a leader right out of graduate school that used the F-word in his vocabulary as nonchalantly as Cousin Frankie requesting to pass the potatoes at Thanksgiving dinner. But does it have to be this way?

1 Tip for The Leadership Challenge of Swearing

I would contend that leaders, and stakeholders alike, would achieve much more success and create harmony in the workplace if swearing was done away with. If as a leader you are looking to advance agenda items, and as stakeholders execute said items, then why would you succumb to swearing?

So here is my 1 tip for the leadership challenge of swearing:

“If you feel as though you must swear… Just don’t do it!”

If the laws of persuasion and influence are alive and well (Thank you Dr. Robert Cialdini!), your vocabulary can help elevate your consistency, likeability, authority, social proof, scarcity, and reciprocity moments. If you’ve spent your entire career building your professionalism, why would you undo it all in a split second with a poor word choice? Know this much… It will take effort and energy NOT to swear.

SUMMARY

In this post we’ve explored the leadership challenge of swearing and provided 1 tip. You can learn a lot about a person by the vocabulary they select. Perhaps there is room for swearing in the locker room, but the boardroom?

 

Sam Palazzolo

PS – I’m proud to say at Tip of the Spear and our platform companies that we’ve had in place for over five years now a “No F-Word” policy. This policy prohibits stakeholders from directing the f-word at each other. It’s written into our code of conduct, and can be used to release one of their duties. I understand that vocabulary is a choice, and am a proud proponent of one’s first amendment “freedom of speech” rights. However, there are plenty of places where one can work if their choice is to employ vocabulary unbecoming.

PPSS – Here’s a nice use of the f-word: “The ‘F-word’ you must use every day in your career” by Danny Rubin