Get your people in place
Acquisitions are always huge undertakings, and the key to Quantum coming out of this successfully was to integrate properly, which started with getting the people aspect in place.
“We took on a strategy that was harder to do — [take the] best of class in both companies to build a new company,” Belluzzo says. “Textbooks tell you that you acquire someone, you integrate deeply and go forward. We didn’t have all the right ingredients at Quantum to pursue our strategy, so we had to acquire and integrate in such a way that we had the best of both worlds.”
That meant that both the executive and the general employee base would be chosen from both companies.
“We took an unconventional approach to doing this,” he says. “That was essential for us to have the skill set and background that we needed to move in this new direction.”
But there are certain things you have to look at to make these decisions — it can’t just be a random selection or who you like best. Belluzzo looked at two things, the first being strength of capabilities in every area — manufacturing, sales, R&D and so on.
“I had to make the decision, ‘Which company was better at that?’” he says.
Then the second part was looking at which leader was better.
“Often, those are the same things, but other times, there was a bit of a mix,” Belluzzo says.
While he worked to pick the best from both companies, he also had to look outside both organizations at times and make hires in addition to the moves and the downsizing.
“We had to, pretty quickly, change the skill base that we had as a company,” he says. “A lot of companies that go through this fail, and I would argue that most of them fail, and part of it is because what they need to do to be successful going forward is very different than what they know how to do. That’s a very hard path to cross, and we had to be aggressive about that.”
Where he had gaps in skill sets, he looked to bring in people to fill those talent voids.
“You start by bringing on a few people who are the real experts in the field,” he says. “They help you define what else you need and how you want to get them. At Microsoft, this was a technique used often that if they were going to go into a new field, they would hire one or two key people and build around them, and we did a lot of that also.”
This comes down to a lot of personal recruiting on your behalf and talking them through your vision.
“There’s not a formula for how to do that,” Belluzzo says. “That’s what part of leadership is — to be connected with people and to recruit and to make sure you know what you want to build around.”
Ultimately, he was largely successful, but he says it’s important to recognize that you won’t get every move right.
“I feel like 80 percent of what we did initially we did right, and we had to adjust to the 20 percent that we may have done wrong in that process, because you never get it fully perfect,” he says.
That’s a key in integrating acquisitions — not getting bogged down in the decision-making process and instead forging ahead.
“We were decisive,” he says. “We were decisive, and we didn’t let things float, because we didn’t have time to let things develop. We had to be clear about what we were going to do and move forward with conviction.”
His decisions weren’t always popular though, and you have to be prepared to handle that.
“Frankly, a lot of people were dismayed at how I went through this process, because they thought I should pick people I was closest to,” he says. “I spent a lot of time with people one on one. I had a lot of input to make those decisions. I knew it was a matter of survival. I put my neck on the line to borrow this money and make this move, and I was not going to make decisions based on anything other than what would drive us to success.”
