3 Ways To Align On The Prize After Merger

Jeff Hilimire and his marketing agency, Dragon Army, knows something about change. The firm had already earned the distinction of the fastest growing agency in Atlanta for the years 2016-2018, when Jeff and his management team considered acquiring two new agencies, at the same time. Watchword, a branding firm founded by Rachelle Kuramoto, and Atlanta web design agency Sideways8, led by Adam Walker, were established and well-respected when they joined forces with Dragon Army earlier this year. The three of them talk about how they maintained cultural alignment and customer-centricity amidst change.

Weave a Culture that Works

The first and last thing to consider in a merger or acquisition is company culture and this one benefited from familiarity and respect. “The three of us had gotten to know one another over a number of years collaborating on client and philanthropic efforts,” said Kuramoto. “Our values and respect for one another have formed the connective tissue during this process.” This was illustrated in their integration process and in the results to date. “We started by making sure the leaders at the top of each organization fit the company culture,” recalled Walker. Once that was established, then leadership teams and all of the employee base was considered. “In the end, it was an amazing fit all around and the merging of the companies has been very smooth,” he said. But smooth integration after a merger comes with a lot of work.

Finding the initial common ground required a look at the company values and leadership styles. Hilimire speaks often about PVTV, which stands for Purpose, Vision, Tenets, and Values, a series of guiding principles and guardrails that he outlines in his recent business fable book “The 5-Day Turnaround.” Hilimire describes two of Dragon Army’s values as “team first” and “think positively.” These combine to create a powerful recipe for positive change management when team members are “able to accept the changes, see the path forward, and encourage other teammates to see the way through in a productive way.” Regularly pointing employees back to the PVTV “continues to guide us and shepherd us through the transition,” Hilimire notes. They serve to “remind people how to behave and work together.”

Kuramoto said that they “spent a lot of time ahead of the acquisition giving people a chance to know each other” in order to begin the endeavor with strong relationships, even with people who were remote. Making choices about what to do next was made clearer with leadership alignment. Kuramoto said they “put a lot of rigor into when, how, and why we meet at leadership, and much of that time has been focused on prioritizing, setting objectives, and staying on track.”

Take Away:

Spend time on the purpose and values of the company. When adopted at all levels and across all locations they will help to do the work of alignment.

Practice Change

Walker noted that the leadership style and structure across all three companies had not been overly hierarchical which helped prepare the organizations for change. “We embrace a node leadership structure with coaches leading teams of people.” The teams are dynamic allowing them to “flex and bend, but also scale, as needed.” Kuramoto noted that paying attention to each other during the merger and now in operating mode requires some regular practices. “As an expanded team, we do many things to attune to one another as people, from a weekly huddle during which we discuss every important detail and allow for questions to highly agile processes. From Slack channels like #nodumbquestions to regular team round tables dedicating to articulating what’s making people happy, challenged, and available to one another.” Walker credited the regular team check-ins as being critical. “Also, creating documents outlining any struggles and our plans to fix has helped a lot,” he added. “Just having issues written out where people can really see and understand them builds a lot of momentum towards fixing them.” Kuramoto noted that having things documented also helps not having to answer questions multiple times and helped integrate their remote workforce with their physical one. “We’ve had lots of conversations and learned what to put in writing to make everyone feel secure and empowered.”

Take Away:

Have communication mechanisms in place that will scale. Write things down. Create documents for problem solving and communication, as a form of inclusion to remote employees.

Create New Opportunities | Minimize New Distractions

The strategy behind the merger was to provide a greater capability to serve a larger customer base. “We brought together agencies that worked with small to mid-sized companies and agencies that worked with larger companies,” Walker observed. “This enabled us to work on projects small and large while also dramatically expanding our service offering.”

However, in times of change, the focus can shift internally and away from maintaining momentum on new business. To minimize this distraction, the team implemented road shows to clients, “introducing them to the new team members and talking with them about the changes, specifically focus on how the changes would positive affect them,” Hilimire said. Kuramoto added that “once the deal is done, the number of details involved in the M&A transaction is monumental. As a leader in the organization, you’re accustomed to putting the lion’s share of attention to client service excellence, team members, and growth.” So things like integrating timekeeping software platforms, making sure roles across the company are similarly defined, or aligning internal communications, although critical, can consume the leadership capacity. “Operational to-do lists can’t distract from those customer priorities,” Kuramoto noted, “so it made for a few weeks of long days.”

Reflecting on lessons learned, Hilimire noted that he would have focused more on ensuring growth without disruption. “Growth is important for many reasons, and can be the lifeblood of an agency,” he explained. Kuramoto added that Dragon Army is committed to grow through relationships and that the “whole leadership team, led by Adam in his specific growth role, helps to nurture new and organic growth through relationship-based activities like board work, networking, speaking, and supporting endeavors and causes that are important to our partners.” This helps ensure growth is on the top of the agenda.

Take Away:

Never take your eye off the company’s growth engine. Know your levers for growth and keep management attention there.

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This article was originally published on Forbes.com.

On Opportunities

“Open your eyes,

Dream but don’t guess.

Your biggest surprise

Comes after Yes..”

– Muriel Rukeyser

5 Ways to Nurture High Performers

It was great to collaborate with Elisa Torres to bring some new perspectives to the readers of LeadGrowDevelop for the article below:

In every organization, there are those that are identified as key contributors to the success of the business whether they have exceptional technical skills, great relationships throughout the company and with customers, or a track record of delivering results.  We often call these “high performers.”  Research shows that high performers can deliver 400% more productivity than average performers. Said another way, every dollar you spend nurturing a high performer to even greater levels of achievement, could return 400% over investments you might make in others.  It is worth the effort.

Here are five ways to nurture high performers in your organization.

1. Let them know they are a high performer in the company
   Tell them that their contribution matters and that their future with the company is bright.  Because every person is different and frustrations and challenges come every day, you should plan on telling them often and in different ways. Tell them with words, with recognition, with opportunities, with advancement, and in their compensation.  Early in my days as a manager, I would gather the team together periodically and hand out trophies (yes, literal trophies, recycled from a thrift store) to recognize employees.  I like to write notes of appreciation and have used team and individual gifts to call attention to great performances.  I use our quarterly review conversations to remind high performers that they are valued by the organization and reflect on all the progress and achievements they have accomplished.
2. Give them an opportunity to profit from the company’s success
   You should be paying your high performers well.  According to research from Oxford Economics and SAP Success Factors, the number one contributing factor to job satisfaction is base pay, followed shortly by bonus incentives.  Special attention should be paid to those high-performers who have had long tenure in the organization and whose annual raises might not have kept up with competitive market pay rates.  But even more important than base salary for those with growth potential, is the opportunity to align their pay with the performance of the company overall.  Many companies have bonus plans or profit sharing for employees, and those are great programs to leverage for high performers.  But you might consider other programs as well.  A special bonus for finishing an important project, an incentive tied to achieving a certain group goal, or even a retainer bonus tied to working through a particular date of importance to the organization.  Find creative ways to compensate your highest performers and you will find them being more creative to grow the business.
3. Keep them accountable
   Just because you are telling your employees that they are valued and critical to the business success, doesn’t mean that key employees should be coddled or that they can do no wrong.  In fact, it is the opposite.  It is like a coach who is hard on their best players, because they see their potential.  Randy Pauch in his book and lecture entitled, The Last Lecture, he told a story of playing sports under a demanding coach.  His conclusion was that “when you’re screwing up and nobody says anything to you anymore, it means they’ve given up on you.”  So, if you have employees that you have not given up on and in fact you see incredible potential, you should spend more of your time and effort helping them to achieve.  Encourage not only your effort, but get other managers and executives in the company to invest their time to give high potential employees the most resources possible.
4. Help them see their potential
   For many high performers, they know what might have made them successful in their current role, but they might not see clearly what they have to strive for.  This is where mentoring, networking, education, and even executive coaching can play a role.  Success, they say, is contagious.  So put your best performers in position so that they can see what world-class performance in their field looks like and they can create their own plans.  Research shows that high performers show a tendency towards self-directed learning and in fact, that is one of the ways to identify high performers who have head room to grow beyond their current roles or contributions.  Early career employees often don’t know what might be possible and need someone to show them the way.
5. Align their career goals with the company’s goals
   We all know the cost (in both hard expenses and soft cost distraction) of losing a key performer.  So, it is important to collaborate to create a career path that aligns the company’s goals for low turn-over and high productivity, to the employee’s goals for personal growth and financial rewards.  Career paths no longer fit solidly on rungs on a ladder, so as a leader you shouldn’t limit your own thinking either.  Not every key contributor or high performer wants to be a manager, wants to take an international assignment, or shares the same motivations.  A one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t work in today’s business environment.

What Color Are Your Glasses?

The other day I heard that in the ancient world the most important ideas were documented in poetry and today our important ideas are captured in spreadsheets.  Although not complete accurate, it is thought-provoking.  What important ideas, passions, or world views are wrapped in the allure of facts and figures and presented as data?  I have long contended that a spreadsheet was an exceptional tool for writing fiction.   Not that people mean harm or to mislead, but each time you have to complete a cell you are making a host of assumptions.  To use the vocabulary of Excel, every number in every cell is filtered.  Filtered by your point of view.

It is the time of year when people are wearing sun glasses.  Where I am from in Oregon, we might be even more sensitive after enduring (ahem, enjoying) months of overcast skies.  And each one of our chooses lenses to wear – both literally and figuratively – to view the world.  Some people wear rose-tinted glasses and see the world as friendly and optimistic (and boy, do we need more of those people in our modern world).  Others see it shaded gray.  Others buy specialty lenses that highlight colors or shapes, like the glasses one can buy for golfing that help the ball stand out on the green. 

An interesting thing happens when you wear glasses for a while: you no longer can see the tint.  Your eyes adjust and the world takes on the colors and meaning that you’d expect.  You know the sky is blue, even if your glasses tinge it green.

Our ability to characterize and categorize input (to know what data is important) and to adjust our perceptions to our world view (like our eyes adjusting to tinted lenses), is part of what makes us human.  And this humanity can make us blind to data that doesn’t fit into our table cleanly or points of view that differ from our own. 

I was working on a financial projection spreadsheet recently (that became even more convincing, I must say, because it was accompanied by a PowerPoint slide deck complete with infographic images and charts from a research analyst) and was reminded the power of the lens. 

When you are working on a presentation, you start by asking what you want the “take away” to be.  What do you want your audience or reader to understand better because of the presentation you are giving?  What decision do you want them to make?  And although it is proper presentation planning, that desired outcome begins its work of filtering and coloring the work of the presentation.  To avoid one-sided analysis, I sought alternative input and ended up putting in a few slides that presented an alternative view.  A different way to look at the issue at hand.  To open the door for discussion.  To guard against too narrow thinking.   And to document assumptions.

It was a hard thing to do: to get away from the data and the analysis far enough to see a different picture, to take in different input, to identify what had been “thrown away” to make the clean and compelling point.  But it proved to be valuable and, in the end, will lead to a better outcome. 

So whether your best ideas are captured in poetry or in spreadsheets, it is important to remember that your best ideas might be improved, if you take off your glasses.

This article was first posted on LinkedIn Pulse. 

Ideas vs Opportunities

In her book, You Can Kill an Idea, But You Can't Kill an Opportunity author and consultant, Pam Henderson, contrasts ideas to business opportunities and creates a framework for exploring and developing opportunities.  In her vernacular, ideas are the proverbial shiny objects that are tactical in nature and might distract an organization from the real opportunities before them.

As a bit of an "idea factory" myself I do find it important to keep the business goals ever present.  After all, creativity can be waste, unless the unique and original ideas are valuable to your customers or lead your organization forward.