Update employees. It’s critically important that (employees) understand the big-picture strategy, the individual details, (the) specifics of every strategic vision people have to carry out. The more they understand from the big picture down to the specifics, the more they understand what that is, the better they are able to go about executing that vision and helping you understand where you may have to change it, tweak it, adjust it.
The founding family that owns the company is very, very intent on making sure that not only from the acquisition perspective but also the whole employee culture we have developed, which gets driven from them at the top, is one of as much transparency, open, honest about what our big-picture direction is as we can possibly make it.
(Clark-Reliance Chairman) Matthew Figgie, when he was still in the vice chairman role, started talking to all of our employees at our quarterly meetings about the acquisition process three years ago. At that point, we weren’t really completely as active as we are now.
We try and make sure that whether or not that employee is going to be involved in that acquisition discussion from day one or not, we want them to start hearing about it from day one.
Form a list. Typically what we’ve done in the past and what we’ll continue to do, we try to first generate, what I’ll call, a wish list or target acquisition list of what we’ll classify as the top 100 or so companies that really make sense to us.
We used both internal resources and, to some degree, some external resources.
To be honest, what we find is the best thing to do is get all of your employees — when I say all, the majority that are in product management and sales — and have them do as much informal information gathering as they possibly can. Like, ‘Hey, you’ve been at a competitor’s plant,’ or, ‘You’ve been at this person’s plant. About how many people do they have? Who is their president? Who is their vice president of sales? About how big is their plant?’
We’ve had more luck, quite frankly, with the more informal information-gathering process than anything else, where it’s word-of-mouth. It’s getting all of your people energized to understand you’re on an acquisition program, that acquisitions are just as important as your organic or internal growth, and that you, as an employee, play a significant part in giving us ideas, bits of information.
Generally what they’re going to come back with, at least first off, is a list of your competitors, which makes sense.
No matter how big or how small your competitors are, it never fails there are sometimes billion-dollar companies that have very small divisions that may be interested in selling a piece of them off. No matter how big the company is, never discount making that phone call.
How to reach: Clark-Reliance Corp., (440) 572-1500 or www.clarkreliance.com
