My reflections after an acquisition killed my love …
Now you may be saying, “Wow, what drama!” but stick with me and let me explain.
What follows is not an epic tale of woe. It is some deep reflection on the last six months of my professional life, learnings and understanding I would like to share.
So, a little context and history to set the scheme. I started in my role five years ago in a senior automation role. Over that five years, I worked my way up to the CTO role for a company that I loved, and a CEO with whom I had been to hell and back several times (and would again if needed.)
Like all typical SaaS companies, investment is a usual way of life. The company had had several investment rounds, but this time a strategic acquisition was on the cards.
My company was acquired, and I was lucky enough to step up into the global CTO role.
What follows are some learnings, in no particular order, from my reflection of the last six months.
Grief
Mergers and acquisitions are complex affairs. The thing to appreciate most is that you are bringing together two (or more), often very different, businesses and looking, at best, to consolidate people, processes, culture and tooling.
This consolidation essentially means that the company that you knew, and in my case loved, no longer exists once this consolidation has begun. The single most significant cause of most of my stress and anxiety came about because I tried to hold on to what I had and what I had built. As a person who is passionate about his people, seeing what was three years of effort and growth seemingly start to crumble was one of the most heartbreaking things I have had to endure.
The old company will “die”, but that doesn’t mean it can’t evolve into something new that could be just as good or even better. Culture and great working environments are not magical things. They come about because leaders care about their people and work very hard to ensure the culture is being maintained or, in this case, is headed in a positive direction.
So my advice on this is, acknowledge the loss early, reframe your thinking to look forward then be the influencer that sets the path to a brighter, more positive future.
Don’t get fixated on tools
Another thing teams and companies get fixated on is tooling.
“We use X, but the new company use Y. Why do we need to change?”
The above question is prevalent and can cause angst, especially for the group that has to change. The key here is all about how you communicate and manage the impact of the change. It’s essential to convey the intent, the “why” something needs to change.
Even if the decision has already been made, it’s crucial to bring people on the journey and make as productive a path forward as you can. The mistake acquiring companies often make is that they underestimate the nuances surrounding tooling and do not consider the full impact of too rapid a change on this front.
As a technology leader, I understand the importance of consolidating standard tooling across the company; this will prove to be one of the more challenging things you will need to deal with, especially for the front line workers.
The “reset”
Another important thing I learned was that it is critical for the health of your team and for you to stay positive and constructive during change. Often change is handed down, so as a leader, it’s your job to help execute that change with as little disruption as you can. The only way to do this is to bring your people on that journey.
At a challenging period, I pulled my team together to do a “reset”. This reset was just as much for me as it was for the group. The first reason for it was to ensure the group’s pulse was ok. The mental health of the group is vital in an environment with large amounts of rapid change. The second reason was to encourage the team to be curious about the changes happening. Seek to understand the why and move to see the opportunity. This will help keep the group from defaulting into a defensive stance.
The reset was a beneficial process and kept my team and I in a constructive frame of mind.
Connect early and regularly
Post-acquisition, I inherited an additional ~90 people onto my team in technology. The single best thing I did was spend the first month connecting with every new individual in my department. I conducted one-on-one meetings with technical and people leaders and then met with the delivery teams as groups.
I felt it was necessary, given I had essentially taken over the department, to connect with all those that were “under” me. My intent in doing this was to put a face to a name. I didn’t want to be one of those unapproachable CTOs in my ivory tower handing down edicts of change. Connecting with the group helped me quickly build rapport and convey the kind of person I am and the way I like to run things.
At the heart of all effective change is transparency. I spent a good deal of time broadcasting the message of openness to this new group so they knew that if a change was coming, they would be kept in the loop and, more importantly, understand the intent behind the change.
I then set up a quarterly catch up with all delivery teams, “Coffee with the CTO”. Also, communicating that my “virtual door” was always open was an effective message.
In Summary
Mergers and acquisitions are complicated processes and offer many challenges as the old identity of the acquired company tries to find a new place in the acquiring company’s ecosystem.
There are many ways to traverse this landscape. One resource I found exceptionally useful in this period was a book by Ryan Holiday called “The Obstacle is the way”. Ryan is a massive name in the modern uptake of Stoic philosophy, which talks a lot to the view that there are no good and bad things; there are only our judgement and opinions.
Like all change, it’s essential to see it as what it is, an opportunity. To learn, grow, be curious and gain greater understanding.
Life is full of change and disruption. Next time you get stressed about something in life or a change you have to deal with, try reframing it as an opportunity. You may find it just that little bit easier to work through.
