Cameron Herold prioritizes culture over numbers in mergers and acquisitions. High employee engagement predicts higher revenue per employee, lower turnover, and happier customers. He focuses on keeping culture-fit employees and removing poor fits for a quick turnaround.
Chapters
Rob Bernstein, who is in leadership development, said, to what extent do you consider the culture of an organization as opposed to just the numbers prior to any M and A activity? And if so, how? Wow. I always consider the culture of the organization. In fact, I probably only consider the culture of the organization first. Culture trumps strategy. If you've got a really, really high employee net promoter score, it generally means you've got an engaged workforce. You probably have high revenue per employee, high profit per employee, or at least the opportunity to get that. You've got very engaged people that are excited about growth, excited about culture, probably low turnover. That tends to translate into very happy customers. So I look for companies that have that. If we're doing M and A opportunity where we're acquiring companies that maybe don't have a strong culture, what I'm looking for are the right culture fit people to keep, and then which ones can I get rid of that are the wrong culture fit so that we can do a quick turnaround. But I think the biggest opportunities are to turn around companies that have a bad culture and then to do acquisitions to look for companies to bring under the fold that maybe have great cultures. But I think really focusing on employee net promoter score and employee engagement and culture is what's going to drive your revenue and profit numbers in the organization, for sure.
