Get buy-in on changes. At the same time, you’ve got to make sure that you don’t come in as a conquering nation. One of the biggest challenges as the acquirer is making sure the organization doesn’t come in and lose the things that are actually done better, and then we back-adopt those into our culture.
They’ve got to feel that they were bought for a reason. It’s important that we articulate that to them and they’re excited that they’re part of the team, not scared.
What we have to do early on in communication with the business being acquired is we say, ‘Look, there are things we bought you for that you are doing better than us. And there are processes and procedures that we are doing that are better than what you’re doing. We are going to put those in place and we’re going to also steal shamelessly the stuff you do better, so you should be proud of that.’
We have members from that regional team participating in the due diligence. It enables the team to come back and say, ‘What these guys are doing for maintenance is a hell of a lot better than what we’re doing.’ Our organization will accept it because we’ve recognized it; it’s not being forced on them.
We’ll also split crews. So we’ll take people from the acquisition and we’ll put them with teams from our company to work in a given area together. It’s not just a matter of telling them, ‘This is the way to do it,’ but they can physically be involved and see firsthand that it’s better. If people see it work better, they’ll adapt to it much quicker than if you tell them in a meeting room and just ask them to go out and do it.
Provide ongoing support. We don’t make an acquisition that’s going to sit out there as an island. We’ve set up a geographic regional structure so that we have a regional vice president. We’ll generally put in a project manager or two from our other business. We’re not overbearing on them, but we have our checks and balances in place.
We try not to set them free completely. They’ll always report in, in some way, shape or form. If you let them run on their own, they will do things that you don’t want them to, and it’s more difficult to correct after it’s done than beforehand. That’s why we went to the regional structure, so that we could tuck these acquisitions in and still have that local overarching support.
We try to put processes around it as much as possible, but there is a human side at the end of the day. There’s some coaching that will take place. There are more one-on-one conversations that will take place [with struggling employees.] Don’t prolong it. Get 80 percent of the way there as quick as possible and you’ll be able to work through the other pieces.
How to reach: Inland Pipe Rehabilitation LLC, (313) 899-3014 or www.inlandpiperehab.com