Leadership Lessons Blog

Spotlight on Business Mergers and Acquisitions: Surprises and Helping Your Team Adjust

  

  

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In Part two of my conversation with Tim Halligan, President of Exchange Authority, he shares insights on some of his greatest surprises following an acquisition and what he would have done differently.

Missed Part 1? Spotlight on Business Mergers and Acquisitions

Celia: What was greatest surprise to you after the acquisition?

Tim: "I was surprised that about one quarter of my time for the better part of six months was tied up meeting reporting and management requirements for a corporate owner. At the same time the acquisition occurred, the economy took a nose dive. This had a substantial impact on our industry and we had difficulty meeting financial expectations for the sale. Then there was the amount of work required to transition our accounting practices to new practices.

And perhaps the biggest surprise of all was how SLOWLY everything worked. As entrepreneurs, my partner and I were used to coming to decisions quickly, understanding urgencies and responding to them. We were not used to the due diligence requirements of our buyer. Even simple IT request did not take precedent over perceived security issues."

Celia: How did you help your team deal with differences ?

Tim: "Much closer contact on issues affecting them. We encouraged the staff to speak directly to me or to you, Celia to ensure that their human resource needs and questions were being answered. By maintaining an "outside" resource our buyer was able to conduct meetings and discuss human resource and marketing activities objectively. It also avoided the perception that this was a "takeover." We wanted to avoid at all costs the "us versus them" attitude.

We were also not afraid to call in managers from our buying entity to assist us in dealing with members of their staff. We found creative ways to ask questions and make suggestions that helped us reach our objectives and avoided "turf" wars. But I did find it difficult to juggle the needs of my own staff with the management objectives I was given as a result of the acquisition."

Question: Did you underestimate any of the difficulties associated with the merger?

"Having been my own manager for last 30 years it was a real adjustment to being managed. Biggest adjustment is that things do not happen when I think they should. I had forgotten how to play the game even though I was warned repeatedly by our business consultant that this might happen.

When I owned the company, if I had an issue with something I dealt with it. Now everything is management by committee with final approval of one individual. It has been a new and different challenge."

In part 3 of our conversation Tim shares what he would do differently and the questions he would ask. He also talks about what steps/considerations for a successful acquisition. Subscribe to our blog via the RSS feed or email to receive a notification when this, and other business tips are published.